Professional development for health workers in East Africa

See also

Full workshop report (PDF 18 pages 143 KB)

Report from first CME workshop, Uganda 2002

Report on third CME consultation workshop, Tanzania 2004

Proposal to make CPD a statutory requirement for all healthcare professionals (PDF 10 pages 78KB)

More about CME in East Africa

Report from consultative meeting on CME and the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Kenya, July 2003, Amref and AfriAfya (PDF 30 pages 375KB)

Conference report on ICTs and CME in East and Southern Africa Tanzania 2003, IICD (PDF 46 pages)

Continuing professional development in the East Africa region will enable health workers at all levels to maintain their skills, find and use relevant information and provide an agreed standard of cost-effective care.

A three-day consultation workshop brought health, human resource and policy representatives together to consolidate progress on professional development initiatives in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The workshop, in October 2003 in Nairobi, Kenya, was the second of three events sponsored by Exchange to support the development of a comprehensive Continuing Medical Education (CME) programme in the region.

Since the initial consultation meeting in Kampala, Uganda, work has been underway to make professional development a reality for all health workers. The third event in Tanzania in November 2004 aims to get agreement on the next steps, including a common accreditation policy.

Encouraging learning

A strong learning culture is needed, agreed participants. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) was adopted as an approach as it combines top-down directives and accreditation with recognition for ongoing learning between health workers – encouraging a bottom-up thirst for new knowledge.

Presentations by participants from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and the UK outlined some of the components that can contribute to the success of CPD. Auditing to check that health care systems support good practice and a transferable accreditation system were seen as priorities.

A coordinated approach

A strong sense of consensus was reported at the workshop and participants welcomed the continued involvement of medical associations and other professional bodies. National CPD councils were proposed, along with a cross-regional coordinating body that could raise the profile of CPD and ensure consistent services.

East African participants highlighted the problems of securing adequate funding and coordinating a flexible strategy that includes primary health care workers in rural areas. They saw CPD as a key strategy to counteract the “brain drain”.

Participants stressed the need to see CPD as a human resource issue. The proposal that came out of the workshop recommends ring-fenced funding that is allocated by the human resource departments of each country’s Ministry of Health.

Recommendations include:

• CPD should be compulsory in the region, following Uganda’s lead
• Quality assurance and accreditation of CPD programmes are priorities
• Flexible learning and credit transfer are needed
• Provision of resources such as journals and library access need to be part of the strategy
  

More learning from practice