Clinical Skills Teaching and Mentorship

PHASE health programmes deliver services to very remote and poor communities in the Nepalese Himalaya. PHASE health workers, though they have relatively few qualifications are often the only health workers in the area, fulfilling the role of doctor, nurse, midwife, dentist, health visitor, pharmacist and counselor.  They can never have enough professional support, but it is difficult to find Nepalese doctors who can spend more than a few days away from their main job.

We recruit experienced British GPs to visit our health posts and spend time teaching health workers basic clinical skills – such as history taking, physical examination, arriving at a diagnosis and counseling.

 

This is appreciated by our staff, who are eager to learn and benefit from the confidence a more experienced clinician can inspire in them and their patients. The visiting GPs also benefit, there is nothing like a couple of weeks in really basic circumstances to make one appreciate our health systems and remind us what it is all about!  

 

Around 10 experienced GPs travel to Nepal each year, they are an invaluable resource to help improve the PHASE primary care programme.  Most volunteers spent about a week in the health posts, though times vary from just 3 to 16 days.

 

The objectives of the programme are:

• Teach healthworkers additional clinical skills and re-enforce their existing knowledge.
•  provide monitoring and a short report to PHASE management
•  professional support to the staff. They work in very isolated conditions and often have to work outside their area of competence, the value of having an experienced visiting clinician befriend and support them cannot be overestimated.

 

Before going to Nepal you receive a briefing pack with suggested topics for teaching and teaching guides, as well as the English version of the PHASE clinical guidelines (The health workers use the Nepali version). Those who are have limited time or have no experience with similar placements usually visit the somewhat less remote areas in Sindhupalchok on their first placement.

 

More recently GP volunteers are concentrating on training up the PHASE health supervisors to become clinical trainers themselves.

 

Please click here for a report from one of the volunteers.

 

For more information about volunteering with PHASE click here or contact Gerda.pohl@phaseworldwide.org