Courses - Mercy Ships Africa

COURSES

Courses will generally take place outside the ship and are offered to selected health professionals.

The following courses will be offered at varying times over the next ten months:

SAFE Pediatric Anesthesia
SAFE Obstetrical Anesthesia
Primary Care Trauma
Essential Surgical Skills
Essential Pain Management
Palliative Care
Sterile Processing
Neonate Resuscitation
Ultrasound
Regional Anaesthesia
Africa Clubfoot Training (using Ponseti Method)
Biomedical
Safe Surgery
Food for Life Nutritional Agriculture

Safe Surgery Course

The Safe Surgery Course is a mobile program, which means that a team of Mercy Ships facilitators will visit surgical hospitals across Senegal. This training is intended for the entire operating room team, including surgeons, anesthesiologists, OR nurses, instrumentalists and sterilization technicians. The sessions will take place over a period of 5 days per hospital and will be organized according to the needs and availability of the hospital. Each hospital is selected by Mercy Ships in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Teamwork, communication and decision-making in the operating room.
Pulse oximetry
WHO Surgical Safety Checklist
Safety in the operating room – sterile environment, counting and sterile processing of instruments.

Essential surgical skills course

The Essential Surgical Skills Course (ESSC) is a two-day course designed to introduce surgical trainees to use safe surgical techniques that are common to all forms of surgery. This course includes two days of initial training, followed by one day of train-the-trainer, and then a two-day training where course is taught by new trainers.

WHO safe surgical checklist course

This checklist is a simple, low-cost tool designed to facilitate teamwork and communication, and helps healthcare professionals perform six essential safety steps for every operation. The tool is not simply a document with steps to ‘tick,’ but a process that enhances the surgical team’s communication and teamwork which are essential to providing safe care.

Primary trauma care course

The PTC course was created to offer training to trauma response physicians and nurses in low resource environments, and is intended to provide basic knowledge and skills necessary to identify and treat those traumatised patients who require rapid assessment, resuscitation, and stabilisation of their injuries. This course highlights the need for early recognition and timely intervention in specific life-threatening conditions.

SAFE* Paediatric anaesthesia course

This course focuses on the delivery of anaesthesia to infants and children, management of aesthetic complications, pain management, trauma, specialised care of sick children, and newborn resuscitation and anaesthesia. The course methodology is designed for use in low-income countries and primarily based on small group workshop style teaching sessions supplemented by only a few large group lectures. *SAFE – Safer Anaesthesia From Education.

SAFE* Obstetric anaesthesia course

This course focuses on the delivery of obstetric anaesthesia as well as managing critical complications arising in obstetric surgery and birth. Modules are clinically relevant and address the core and extended parts of the anaesthetic practitioner. The aim is to increase the quality of care given, safety in obstetric anaesthesia medical practice, and situational and practical knowledge of all participants. *SAFE – Safer Anaesthesia From Education.

Neonatal resuscitation course

The Neonatal Resuscitation Program conveys an evidence-based approach to care of newborns at birth and focuses on team-based care. Based on work completed in other African countries, Mercy Ships found that many healthcare providers are not aware of the best practices for reviving a baby after birth. These healthcare methods providers use are often outdated, incorrect, and dangerous; that may instead lead to the death of the baby. Therefore, the goal is to train healthcare providers in the best, research-based methods of performing neonatal resuscitation.

Food For Life Nutritional Agriculture

Our Food for Life program aims to increase the capacity of young farmers through sustainable and agro-pastoral farming practices.

Through this program, Mercy Ships will train trainers who are already working with local NGOs in the Republic of Senegal. They will then acquire the knowledge and skills to train others in ecological farming techniques that can improve nutrition, create businesses, and provide a sustainable response to environmental degradation. Thus, the objective of Mercy Ships’ Food for Life program is to improve people’s food security while increasing their agricultural capacity, and to train trainers of NGO partners in the Food for Life program.

Topics to be discussed: