In January 2023, Lucy, Louise S and Louise J returned to EFSTH and were delighted to spend another productive week with the team. An early highlight was reviewing their skills retention and discovering that not only are they still practicing to a high standard all that we had taught them, the first 2 core skills are also being successfully cascaded to newer members of the team. Anecdotally, they are already reporting a reduction in aspiration pneumonia and pressure sores, although collecting the data to back this observation up is proving a challenge. The skills have been adopted so well that we felt confident to introduce a third core skill: continence management.
We provided further training materials including 2 laptops, as well as 3 additional slide sheets to help with positioning of patients. We continued the small group teaching as well as presenting at a Grand Round, and also facilitated a virtual training session via Zoom on swallow done by Katherine back in the UK. This model worked well, although we discovered that we needed to buy some external speakers so that the sound could be heard by everyone in the room. This was rectified and it has proved a useful test for future virtual training sessions which are likely to be our main contact with the Gambian team over the next few months as we have not got any future visits planned at present.
During this visit, as well as the EFSTH VIPs, we were lucky to have the opportunity to meet with the Director for Health Services at the Ministry of Health (MoH). He was interested in our partnership and supportive of the long-term goal to establish a stroke unit at EFSTH, although unfortunately stroke is not currently one of the current MoH priorities.
Before leaving EFSTH we agreed a programme of virtual MDT training for the year ahead and actions to be done before the next project planning meeting in March. Overall, it was a very productive and busy week. A highlight was being hosted by Louise Sarr’s lovely family for supper at their home.