Health Care Workers in Participating States benefit from Mentoring Workshop Print
Monday, 28 September 2009 00:00
Fourteen (14) health care workers from the six participating states (Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines) within the Global Fund HIV/ AIDS project were introduced to the techniques of mentoring at a workshop held September 25, - 28, 2009 held in Barbados. This workshop is another capacity building activity which seeks to train clinicians who were mentored during Cycle 1 of the Clinical Mentoring programme to become mentors.

In addition to an overview of clinical mentoring, other topics and skills covered were basic communication skills, building relationships, theory of learning and mentoring of adults, bedside teaching, care and care giving as well as quality improvement. Participants consisted of physicians and nurses who have the responsibility of interacting and caring for persons living with HIV and AIDS.

The pilot Clinical Mentoring Programme was initiated in 2007 by the OECS HIV/AIDS Project Unit (OECS/HAPU) as part of its Integrated Training Strategy to build capacity within its participating states. The 3-Phase programme included on-site visits by a clinical team from each participating state comprising of a physician and nurse mentor and a one-week Preceptorship. The aim of the programme is to develop the HIV care and treatment skills of clinicians through intensive and sustained collaboration with peers primarily from the International Training and Education Center on HIV (I-TECH) and the CHART Network. The objectives are to: (a) improve the quality of HIV clinical care in the OECS; (b) support the application of classroom learning to patient care (c) build the capacity of primary care providers to manage unfamiliar and/or complicated cases, and (d) provide mentees with on-going consultation on complex cases.

This workshop held in collaboration with CHART and I-TECH was also attended by participants from the wider Caribbean including, Bahamas, Barbados, Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.