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Crisis Global Health Public Health Research

New Study on Basic Emergency Care education course in Ukraine

New paper is out now! The publication is open-access and the web link is https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/6/e050871.

Publication Title: Evaluation of change in emergency care knowledge and skills among front-line healthcare providers in Ukraine with the Basic Emergency Care course: a pretest/post-test study

Abstract:
Objective: Evaluate the change in participant emergency care knowledge and skill confidence after implementation of the WHO-International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Basic Emergency Care (BEC) course.
Design: Pretest/post-test quasi-experimental study.
Setting: Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine.
Participants: Seventy-nine participants engaged in the course, of whom 50 (63.3%) completed all assessment tools. The course was open to healthcare providers of any level who assess and treat emergency conditions as part of their practice. The most common participant profession was resident physician (24%), followed by health educator (18%) and prehospital provider (14%).
Interventions: The 5-day WHO-ICRC BEC course.
Primary and secondary outcome measures Change in pre-course and post-course knowledge and skill confidence assessments. Open-ended written feedback was collected upon course completion and analysed for common themes.
Results: Participant knowledge assessment scores improved from 19 (IQR 15–20) to 22 (IQR 19–23) on a 25-point scale (p<0.001). Participant skill confidence self-assessment scores improved from 2.5 (IQR 2.1–2.8) to 2.9 (IQR 2.5–3.3) on a 4-point scale (p<0.001). The most common positive feedback themes were high-quality teaching and useful skill sessions. The most common constructive feedback themes were translation challenges & request for additional skill session time.
Conclusions: This first implementation of the WHO-ICRC BEC course for front-line healthcare providers in Ukraine was successful and well received by participants. This is also the first report of a BEC implementation outside of Africa and suggests that the course is also effective in the European context, particularly in humanitarian crisis and conflict settings. Future research should evaluate long-term knowledge retention and the impact on patient outcomes. Further iterations should emphasise local language translation and consider expanding clinical skills sessions.

Categories
Public Health Research

How can we create frictionless experiences to connect the elderly populations to their healthcare teams?

There is an ongoing assumption that elderly communities are averse to technology, but that is not true. Could it be that the digital health companies are just not designing for their needs and/or improving educational outreach efforts to teach new tech advancements?

In past years, colleagues and I have been discussing the practicalities of using emerging technologies to address the growing issue of elderly loneliness and its implications and adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Technological advancements have offered remarkable opportunities to deliver care and maintain connections despite the need to stay physically separated. These tools can be integrated into crisis communications, public health responses, and healthcare programs to help the elderly communities. However, it must be done strategically and informed by the type of loneliness at play, environmental factors, socioeconomics, and technological literacy (including feedback to improve tech design and function).

What are ways your teams are creating frictionless experiences to connect to the elderly populations?

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COVID-19 Pandemic Public Health

Giving Tuesday 2021

Today is Giving Tuesday & please consider to support Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs carried out by wonderful nonprofits, such as one developed and implemented by The Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center.