Community Health Nurses upgrade skills
About 150 community health officers, nurses and midwives in CHPS zones have undergone a week-long orientation to increase access to quality basic primary health care in six coastal districts in the Western Region.
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The training programme, which was held for health oficials in the Ahanta West, Ellembelle, Jomoro, Nzema East, Shama, and Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis, is the first of three-part orientation programmes being sponsored by the Jubilee partners and implemented by Jhpiego, an international, nonprofit health organisation affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University, to increase the capacity of staff in CHPS compounds in the six coastal districts.
The CHPS concept is designed to send primary health care services to the doorstep of rural community members.
Under the project, community members are selected and trained as Community Health Volunteers (CHV), Community Health Management Committees (CHMC) to assist the Community Health Office whilst nurses concentrate on clinical and public health services provision.
The participants, including 25 community health nurses, 20 enrolled nurses, a midwife and a physician assistant were drawn from 52 CHPS compounds in mostly underserved and low-resourced communities in the Western Region.
Senior Technical Officer and Team Leader of the STAR CHPS, Ms Joyce Ablordeppy, said she was positive about the impact of the orientation and expressed the hope that it would address some of the chanllenges.
The participants were also given the opportunity for clinical practice at the St Martin de Porres hospital at Eikwe.
They were able to examine pregnant women and babies at the labour ward and observe procedures and practices in the ante-natal ward and the out-patients department.
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A Community Health Nurse from the Ahanta West CHPS compound, Margaret Ampabeng, described the orientation workshop as very “enlightening” and appealed for the other Community Health officials to benefit from the training programme.