MHPE programme touches the world by Mr. Joseph Daka
Health Professions Education is for essential frontline health workers: A brief story from Zambia.
As has been stated elsewhere, Maastricht MHPE programme touches the world. Down in the sub-Sahara, I am indebted for the impact of MHPE at Maastricht University.
The teachers are warm, interested in the learners and truly walk the talk of constructive, contextual and collaborative learning. Since I left, I have found myself in a range of tasks related to health professions education. I will share briefly our success, challenges and the inspiration of SHE community in all this.
Chainama College of Health Sciences, Kabwe campus is a satellite campus based in the Central province of Zambia. The main campus is in Lusaka with a range of programs from certificate to degree. In Kabwe, we train general clinical medicine frontline health workers with eventual promotive, preventive, diagnostic and curative responsibilities in the rural, peri-urban, urban and district health facilities. The programme is accredited and licensed by the Health professions Council of Zambia and affiliated to School of Medicine at University of Zambia. Currently the school has 219 students comprising first, second and third year students. Of all the intakes selected, 30% of students are females as by college policy.
What I would call as our success is the drive to seek to do things differently in keeping with our values of Excellency, accountability and collaboration. We have been able to integrate learning of theory and practical skills during weekly schedule, practised peer teaching, peer assessment and feedback during learning and clinical practice. We have been piloting the usage of a simple learning and assessment portfolio during student practicals, we have trained clinical and biomedical technicians in preceptorship and they have been helpful in supervision of students, preparation of and assessment of students. Simulators have been trained in various course specific scenarios. We have also introduced departmental end of rotation OSCEs at district and general hospitals which we are in the process of being evaluated. We have been evaluating clinical practicum learning environments to inform student placement
Personally, my success since leaving Maastricht University has been the widening in scope of involvement in health professions education related responsibilities. These have included being involved in the consultative meetings on curriculum review and development for various courses, licensure examination and being a setter (examiner) of licensure and academic examinations for the national examinations. Also I have contributed in three chapters in the recent manual the college developed for the country-wide training of clinical preceptors who included doctors, medical licentiates, nurses, ophthalmic specialists, clinical officers and laboratory technicians. The chapters are on learning theories, feedback and assessment. Equally my current responsibility as principal lecturer and head of department (involves programming and supervising faculty and participation in college management) thanks to MHPE and the imparted knowledge.
Among the challenges we face is the need for additional space to expand on enrolments and programmes, lack of some full-time experts to teach in some courses which makes us depend on part-time lecturers and lack of students logistics transport. My country is still growing in appreciation of health professions education evidence in educational development.
Joseph Daka, 2013-2015 cohort, MHPE email: joenoka@gmail.com
Thank you so much Joseph for your kind and inspiring words
Skills laboratory
Second year student making a presentation
Mr. Joseph Daka extreme right with some students
Mr. Joseph Daka
Chainama College front