Cleft Care: SmileTrain, OHAI Boost Confidence of Nurses in Africa
Determined to ensure that personnel handling cleft cases are properly equipped for the task, SmileTrain in collaboration with Oral Health Advocacy Initiative (OHAI) and the National Hospital, Abuja has trained nurses from Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ghana to boost their knowledge and confidence in handling cleft cases.
The training according to the organisers is in view of the fact that nurses are the ones who prepare patients for surgery and cater for them after the surgery.
A cleft is a gap or split in the upper lip and/or roof of the mouth (palate). It is present from birth. The gap is there because parts of the baby’s face didn’t join together properly during development in the womb. A cleft lip and palate is the most common facial birth defect.
Smile Train is an international children’s charity that provides 100 percent free cleft repair surgery and comprehensive cleft care to children in 85 developing countries.
Speaking to newsmen in Abuja at the end of the three-day training tagged ‘Nursing Care Saves Lives’, Victoria Awazie, Smile Train Programme Assistant in West Africa explained that the training was in line with the organisation’s model which is to enhance the local capacity in cleft management.
“The model of Smile Train is to teach a man how to fish and not to give a man fish and go. You teach a man how to fish and he goes back to the sea to fish for himself”, Awazie said.
She explained further that the model adopted by Smile Train is to ensure that all children with cleft anywhere they maybe are reached especially in view of the fact that many of them are stereotyped as cursed, evil spirit and many other mundane believes.
Speaking on the choice of nurses for the training, Awozie averred that the nurses were the first medical personnel that cleft patients meet when they go to hospitals.
“Training for the nurses is apt because it is not just the surgeons that are involved in cleft management. Surgeons go to the theatre and perform surgeries and leave. Who take care of these patients afterwards. They are the nurses and they have to be equipped. If a doctor is not there what do you do as a nurse? The essence of this training is one, to train the nurses to be more professional and skilful, to take comprehensive care of the cleft child and to minimize mortality.
“These children don’t die on the surgical table, sometimes it could be a mistake or the nurse didn’t do what was supposed to be done. This training is aimed at improving the nurses on their job. To help them know what to do at any given time and how to take care of the cleft patient”, Awazie noted.
She lauded OHAI and the National Hospital, Abuja for hosting the training singling out OHAI for its exceptional contribution in Cleft management in Nigeria.
Also speaking, Rona Breese, a registered nurse practitioner and nurse trainer based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania who has been in Africa for 15 years and one of the resource persons at the training expressed confidence that the knowledge gained would help improve quality of service offered by Smile Train partner hospitals.
“This training is about teaching them where problems may arise, teaching them to recognize these problems and what they can do while waiting for the doctors, because it is in such way that they can actually save lives. Another focus of this training is to get Nurses to believe that they can actually make a difference.
Some of the participants who spoke differently expressed satisfaction with the knowledge gained saying it will make them better professionals.
For Barbara Frimpong, Assistant Speech Therapist and Nurse from Ghana, the training has further exposed her to the theories of the procedures she was hitherto not conversant with.
“We will go back more equipped to provide better care for cleft patients. Most of the things discussed are things we were already aware of but have been presented in a manner that our confidence has been boasted”, enthused HanaYaa Gyamfua Gyamfi, another participant from Ghana.
Source: Nigerian Pilot News
