KEHPCA believes that all doctors graduating should have knowledge and skills in palliative care. KEHPCA has been working with medical, nursing, dental and pharmacy training institutions to integrate palliative care in their respective curricula.
A group of newly qualified medical officer interns approached KEHPCA’s national director, Dr. Ali requesting her for training on palliative care.
KEHPCA in collaboration with Nairobi Hospice organized a two day training session on 5th and 6th March 2012 for a group of 50 medical officer interns. The interns were trained on palliative care with emphasis on principals of palliative care; pain assessment and management; breaking bad news & ethical and professionalism in palliative care.
The interns were very grateful to receive this training as they are soon to be deployed to different parts of the country where they will be expected to manage patients with life threatening illnesses. Some of them will be working with the 11 government hospitals that KEHPCA is mentoring to integrate palliative care, others will champion scaling up of palliative care services in their new station.
“These sessions have been an eye opener to us; we were very apprehensive, not knowing what to expect when we start our internship, but now we feel more knowledge and believe that we will be able to add life into our patients’ days. I can now comfortably prescribe opioids to patients who need them. Thank you KEHPCA for supporting this initiative. ’ Said one participant.
KEHPCA would like to acknowledge Dr. Job Mwale, who is one of the interns for facilitating the interns to participate in the training. KEHPCA looks forward to reaching out to the other 450 interns in the course of this year.
I believe this is a good endeavour and should continue. Dr. Job Mwale should participate in organising more events in the future. kudos job and ua group.
I AM A NEWLY QUALIFIED MEDICAL OFFICER WHO HAS BEEN RETAINED IN HOMABAY DISTRICT HOSPITAL WHERE I DID MY MEDICAL INTERNSHIP.
I JUST WISH KEHPCA CAN START VISITING UPCOUNTRY HOSPITALS WHERE THEY CAN BE OF MUCH IMPORTANCE IN OFFERING PC TRAINING TO THE YOUNG DOCTORS WHO ARE ON ONE TO ONE CONTACT WITH THE PATIENTS WHO REQUIRE PC. SOMETIMES WE FIND OURSELVES IN A HOLE THAT WE CANT COME OT OF WHEN WE ARE FACED BY A TERMINALLY ILL PATIENT.
PLEASE I WOULD LIKE KEHPCA TO CONSIDER HOMABAY.
THANKYOU
Dear Kairu, thank you for you comments. My name is Zipporah Ali (Zippy), ED for KEHPCA. I can feel your frustrations and I promise that we will do something very soon. Could you please send me your email to zippy@kehpca.org we can start looking at how we can support clinicians in Homa Bay and the surrounding areas, maybe plan for a training as well. I would also like to suggest that you link up with Kisii Provincial General Hospital since they now have a palliative care unit in the hospital. The other near places are Kisumu Hospice in Kisumu and the New Nyanza Provincial Hospital which now hava palliative care unit. I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards, Zippy