Abstract
BackgroundTanzania is a low income, East African country with a severe shortage of human resources for health or health workers. This shortage threatens any gains the country is making in improving maternal health outcomes. This paper describes a partnership between Touch Foundation and NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing - Global, aimed at improving clinical mentorship and capacity among nurses and midwives at two rural hospitals in the Tanzanian Lake Zone Region. Clinical mentoring capacity building and supportive supervision of staff has been shown to be a facilitator of retaining nurses and would be possible to acquire and implement quickly, even in a context of low resources and limited technology.MethodsA case study approach structures this program implementation analysis. The NYU Meyers team conducted a 6-day needs assessment at the two selected hospitals. A SWOT analysis was performed to identify needs and potential areas for improvement. After the assessment, a weeklong training, tailored to each hospitals’ specific needs, was designed and facilitated by two NYU Meyers nursing and midwifery education specialists. The program was created to build on the clinical skills of expert nurse and midwife clinicians and suggested strategies for incorporating mentoring and preceptorship as a means to enhance clinical safety and promote professional communication, problem solving and crisis management.ResultsNineteen participants from both hospitals attended the training. Fourteen of 19 participants completed a post training, open ended questionnaire for a 74% response rate. Fifty-seven percent of participants were able to demonstrate and provide examples of the concepts of mentorship and supervision 4 and 11 months’ post training. Participants indicated that while confidence in skills was not lacking, barriers to quality care lay mostly in understaffing. Implementation also offered multiple insights into contextual factors affecting sustainable program implementation.ConclusionsThree recommendations from this training include: 1) A pre-program assessment should be conducted to ascertain contextual relevance to curriculum development; 2) flexibility and creativity in teaching methods are essential to engage students; and 3) access to participants a priori to program implementation may facilitate a more tailored approach and lead to greater participant engagement.
Highlights
Tanzania is a low income, East African country with a severe shortage of human resources for health or health workers
The human resources for health (HRH) shortage has contributed to a dire state regarding maternal morbidity and mortality in the country
Tanzania is one of seven countries that account for 3–5% of global maternal deaths reported in 2010 [4]
Summary
Tanzania is a low income, East African country with a severe shortage of human resources for health or health workers. This shortage threatens any gains the country is making in improving maternal health outcomes. Tanzania is a low income, East African country with an estimated population of 45 million people which faces a severe human resources for health (HRH) or health workforce shortage [1]. The HRH shortage has contributed to a dire state regarding maternal morbidity and mortality in the country. Tanzania did not meet Millennium Development Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health, its government along with the public and private sector continue to heavily invest to increase access to maternal, newborn and child services nationally at all public health care facilities [5]
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