Introduction: The 68th World Health Assembly, in 2015, called for surgical and anaesthesia services strengthening. Acknowledging the healthcare staff shortages, they referred to task sharing, among others, as a more effective use of the healthcare workforce. While task sharing has been increasingly proposed as an important strategy to increase the reach and safety of anaesthesia as well as a means of supporting the workforce in low-resource settings, most data on task sharing relate to non-anaesthetic healthcare contexts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeonatal mortality remains disproportionately high in sub-Saharan Africa partly due to insufficient numbers of adequately trained and skilled front-line health workers. Opportunities for improving neonatal care may result from upskilling frontline health workers using innovative technological approaches. This practice paper describes the key steps involved in the design, development and implementation of an innovative smartphone-based training application using an agile, human-centred design approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although smartphone-based emergency care training is more affordable than traditional avenues of training, it is still in its infancy, remains poorly implemented, and its current implementation modes tend to be invariant to the evolving learning needs of the intended users. In resource-limited settings, the use of such platforms coupled with gamified approaches remains largely unexplored, despite the lack of traditional training opportunities, and high mortality rates in these settings.
Objective: The primary aim of this randomized experiment is to determine the effectiveness of offering adaptive versus standard feedback, on the learning gains of clinicians, through the use of a smartphone-based game that assessed their management of a simulated medical emergency.
Objective: To describe the extent to which different categories of anaesthesia provider are used in humanitarian surgical projects and to explore the volume and nature of their surgical workload.
Design: Descriptive analysis using 10 years (2008-2017) of routine case-level data linked with routine programme-level data from surgical projects run exclusively by Médecins Sans Frontières-Operational Centre Brussels (MSF-OCB).
Setting: Projects were in contexts of natural disaster (ND, entire expatriate team deployed by MSF-OCB), active conflict (AC) and stable healthcare gaps (HG).
Surg Technol Int
November 2019
Background: Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) has been used in surgery for several decades. Over the past 5-10 years, however, new technological advances, including high-resolution screens, mobile graphical processing units (mGPUs) and position-sensing technologies, have been incorporated into relatively low-cost VR and AR devices. This review focuses on the current impact of the application of these "Phase 2" VR/AR technology in surgical training.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In Africa, most countries have fewer than 1 physician anesthesiologist (PA) per 100,000 population. Nonphysician anesthesia providers (NPAPs) play a large role in the workforce of many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but little information has been systematically collected to describe existing human resources for anesthesia care models. An understanding of existing PA and NPAP training pathways and roles is needed to inform anesthesia workforce planning, especially for critically underresourced countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To explore the views of non-physician anaesthesia providers (NPAPs) and their colleagues regarding the effectiveness of NPAP training programmes in three contrasting sub-Saharan African countries.
Design: This was a qualitative exploratory descriptive study. Semistructured interviews were conducted online, recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically using NVivo.
In this paper, we discuss the role of mobile technology in developing training tools for health workers, with particular reference to low-income countries (LICs). The global and technological context is outlined, followed by a summary of approaches to using and evaluating mobile technology for learning in healthcare. Finally, recommendations are made for those developing and using such tools, based on current literature and the authors' involvement in the field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Needle visibility using ultrasound remains problematic at steep insertion angles. Despite modified techniques, steep approaches are still needed, particularly in the obese, neuraxial anesthesia or pain blocks around the spine. We describe a novel technique for objective assessment of needle-tip identification and present data on a new needle.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To review the effects of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) in the parturient and the anesthetic management of such patients during pregnancy and delivery.
Source: A literature search (1966-2008) was performed using Medline and EMBASE databases. Bibliographies of retrieved articles were searched for additional sources.