7th July, 2008
The Kenyatta National Hospital and AMREF have signed a memorandum of understanding for the upgrading of 500 Enrolled Nurses into Registered Community Health Nurses through AMREF’s Virtual Nursing School (AVNS).
AMREF will use computer-based training modules to train the nurses over the next five years. Nurses continue to work as they learn, using the computers to study during their free time with the guidance of mentors trained by AMREF. The course is a blend of theory and clinical experience in the wards, with frequent follow-up to ensure quality supervision of the nurses.
The agreement was signed by AMREF’s Deputy Director-General Dr Florence Muli-Musiime and the Chief Executive Officer of the KNH, Dr Jotham Micheni.
“This is not just a collaboration on training, but a demonstration of how private-public partnerships should work,” said Dr Muli-Musiime. “If this kind of partnership was scaled up, it would go a long way in meeting Kenya’s critical need for health workers. My hope is that, as AMREF build’s the KNH’s capacity for training, the hospital will become a resource centre for other hospitals and training centres to train nurses and other health workers in a similar manner across the country.”
Dr Micheni said the hospital had decided to go into partnership with AMREF to ease the burden on the government to train and employ health workers.
“The hospital’s mandate is to provide specialised health care, and to provide facilities for training of health workers. Besides helping the government to formulate health policy, the hospital is also involved in research, and all these areas give us greater scope for collaboration with AMREF.”
Dr Micheni suggested that AMREF and KNH could work together to tackle ‘neglected diseases’ such as hydatid, a disfiguring condition caused by tapeworms, and other tropical diseases that seem to have been forgotten. Another urgent area of concern is revival of the referral system in Kenya.”
“Kenyatta Hospital has become a victim of its own success,” said Dr Micheni. “People by-pass hospitals and clinics in their districts and come to us for treatment, causing congestion and stretching the staff and facilities that we have. AMREF and the Kenyatta National Hospital should provide leadership on the creation of centres of excellence outside Nairobi so that people can receive treatment there, and only critical and complicated cases are sent here.”
AMREF’s Virtual Nursing School is a pilot project to test the effectiveness and adaptability of training through eLearning, thus increasing students’ access to quality nursing education while allowing them to continue working. ELearning builds on traditional classroom training methods, employing a balance of human resources and information technology.
The school is currently training nurses from public, private and mission hospitals. At the same time, AMREF is using the eLearning programme to training thousands of nurses in hospitals and nursing schools across the country in collaboration with the Nursing Council of Kenya, Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company and the Ministry of Health.
“eLearning is cheaper and faster than the traditional residential programme,” says Dr Peter Ngatia, AMREF’s Director for Capacity Building, who witnessed the signing of the MOU. “It offers an interactive mode of learning and allows students to gain IT skills. This mode of training harnesses technological advances to improve health and reduce poverty on a local level, and can easily be replicated across Africa.”
Others present at the signing were the programme manager in charge of the AVNS Ms Angela Nguku, KNH Deputy Director Mr Kennedy Auka, the hospital’s Human Resources Manager Mr Fred Oyumbe, Chief Human Resources Officer for staff development Mrs Mary Kathungu and the Chief Nursing Officer Gladys Owira.