Abstract
BackgroundLeading children’s hospitals in high-income settings have become heavily engaged in international child health research and educational activities. These programs aim to provide benefit to the institutions, children and families in the overseas locations where they are implemented. Few studies have measured the actual reciprocal value of this work for the home institutions and for individual staff who participate in these overseas activities. Our objective was to estimate the perceived reciprocal value of health professionals’ participation in global child health-related work. Benefits were measured in the form of skills, knowledge and attitude strengthening as estimated by an adapted Global Health Competency Model.MethodsA survey questionnaire was developed following a comprehensive review of literature and key competency models. It was distributed to all health professionals at the Hospital for Sick Children with prior international work experience (n = 478).ResultsOne hundred fifty six health professionals completed the survey (34%). A score of 0 represented negligible value gained and a score of 100 indicated significant capacity improvement. The mean respondent improvement score was 57 (95% CI 53–62) suggesting improved overall competency resulting from their international experiences. Mean scores were >50% in 8 of 10 domains. Overall scores suggest that international work brought value to the hospital and over half responded that their international experience would influence their decision to stay on at the hospital.ConclusionsThe findings offer tangible examples of how global child health work conducted outside of one’s home institution impacts staff and health systems locally.
Highlights
Leading children’s hospitals in high-income settings have become heavily engaged in international child health research and educational activities
Five additional questions queried the value attributed to global health work by health professionals and senior administrators and explored the institutional support of global health work at SickKids
Among the 161 completed surveys, 5 responses were excluded from the final analysis for failing to meet the original eligibility criteria and 26 questions were removed for reasons outlined in Knowledge of global health Cultural awareness & promotion Teamwork & Collaboration Personal Capacity Development Soft Skills Job-related skills Self-management & awareness Ethical reasoning Patient-centred care Strategic analysis & decision-making
Summary
Leading children’s hospitals in high-income settings have become heavily engaged in international child health research and educational activities These programs aim to provide benefit to the institutions, children and families in the overseas locations where they are implemented. The international program at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, like Boston’s Children’s Hospital and CHOP, has a commercial arm for global consulting and a non-commercial arm for research, sustainable capacity building, program evaluation and advocacy. This program is consistent with the SickKids vision of, ‘healthier children, a better world’ [6]. The global health consulting components at each of these three hospitals aim to enhance local training, technology and treatment to provide world-class patient care locally, while the non-consulting components are focused on partnership development, research, education and health systems strengthening
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