Collaborative task-sharing to enhance the Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) access among expectant women in Kenya: The role of midwife sonographers.

Collaborative task-sharing to enhance the Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) access among expectant women in Kenya: The role of midwife sonographers. J Interprof Care. 2018 May 10;:1-4 Authors: Vinayak S, Brownie S Abstract Unrealized maternal and child health goals continue to challenge Kenya where adverse outcomes remain high and diagnostic services are limited. The acute shortage of doctors and radiographers requires alternate human resources for health (HRH) with the ability to identify risk factors in pregnancy through Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS). A specialist radiologist and ultrasonography team partnered with midwives to adopt interprofessional task sharing and capacity building. Faculty from the Radiology Department of our hospital designed and implemented the project which was carried out at three outreach health service centres. Designing and implementing a training model to skill midwife sonographers with the capacity to accurately identify risk factors in pregnancy is an effective model to increase POCUS access. A collaborative task sharing model focused on training quality, validation of results, tracking of errors and specialist level clinical supervision yielded a safe and scalable model of HRH capacity building. Programme evaluation, verification of outcomes and dissemination of results were all monitored. The project was a successful HRH task sharing and interprofessional learning initiative involving task sharing...
Source: Journal of Interprofessional Care - Category: Health Management Tags: J Interprof Care Source Type: research