KENYA – Amref Health Africa, the largest health development non-governmental international organisation based in Africa, and Johnson & Johnson have partnered to build the capacity of nurses in oncology nursing amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Amid ongoing pandemic, Amref and J&J’s Nursing Global Community Impact adopted measures to support remote teaching and learning for the Oncology Nursing Training project, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.
“The project aimed at strengthening the capacity of health systems to ensure quality management of cancer through training nurses in oncology, advocacy, monitoring and evaluation, capacity building and generation of evidence for policy and practice change,” said the nonprofit.
To achieve this, identified modules were offered through Amref’s e-Learning platform, Jibu, and blended with online teaching sessions for the participants.
“This has since enabled 20 nurses from the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s, College of Health Sciences, to be equipped with oncology nursing so as to appropriately take care of patients suffering from cancer despite the restriction of face-to-face training,” said Amref.
In addition, various stakeholders from Amref Health Africa’s Institute of Capacity Development, Amref Health Innovations and Amref International University among others worked together to develop and digitize the learning material, available on the Jibu platform.
Other stakeholders include National Cancer Institute, Kenya Medical Training College as well as Schools of Nursing from Nairobi Hospital, Kenyatta National Hospital and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH).
“As of June 2022, the 20 students from MTRH’s College of Health Sciences had completed the course through this blended approach, awaiting graduation later this year (2022),” disclosed Africa’s leading health non-governmental organization.
The digitized training materials were packaged into key units namely critical thinking and academic writing, fundamentals of oncology, health assessment and diagnostics in oncology together with communication and counselling.
Epidemiology and research methods in oncology, cancer treatment modalities, palliative care in oncology, clinical oncology, applied nutrition in oncology, physical and rehabilitative therapy for oncology patients were also covered units in the training sessions.
“Principles of cancer prevention and control, community oncology, health promotion & advocacy, strategic leadership and management in health, teaching and instructional design,” the nonprofit added.
Based on the learnings from the latest engagement, Amref Health Innovations, has further redesigned the programme into a 2-week Continuous Professional Development course that will soon be rolled out to complement the blended learning approach.
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