Developing an interprofessional transition course to improve team-based HIV care for sub-Saharan Africa
Date
2020-12-09
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMC (part of Springer Nature)
Abstract
Background: With funding from the United States Health Resources Service Administration (HRSA), a consortium of
health professional training institutions from Africa developed HIV-specific, interprofessional, team-based
educational resources to better support trainees during the transition period between pre-service training and
professional practice.
Methods: Ten faculty members representing nine medical and nursing schools in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)
developed a training package of modules focused on core clinical, public health, interprofessional education (IPE),
and quality improvement (QI) domains related to HIV service delivery. Curriculum development was informed by a
rapid needs assessment of existing tools and future needs for HIV education across 27 SSA health professions
training institutions. A total of 17 modules were developed, targeted at newly qualified health care professionals to
be taught in a series of two-day workshops meant to complement existing institution specific HIV-curricula.
Results: Between April and July 2019, a comprehensive case-based HIV training package was developed to support
trainees in transition from pre-service training to independent professional practice. Each module, addressing
different elements of interprofessional practice, was intended to be delivered in an interprofessional format. Thus
far, 70 health professions training institutions in 14 countries have implemented the program; 547 educators
facilitated STRIPE workshops, with a total of 5027 learners trained between September 2019 and September 2020.
Conclusions: To our knowledge this is the first IPE HIV-specific curriculum explicitly focused on enhancing the
quality of training provided to graduating health care professionals working in SSA. The collaborative, crossinstitutional,
interprofessional approach to curriculum development provides a benchmark for how best-practice
approaches to education can be disseminated in SSA.
Description
CITATION: Kiguli-Malwadde, E., et al. 2020. Developing an interprofessional transition course to improve team-based HIV care for sub-Saharan Africa. BMC Medical Education, 20:499, doi:10.1186/s12909-020-02420-x.
The original publication is available at https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com
The original publication is available at https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com
Keywords
Interprofessional
Citation
Kiguli-Malwadde, E., et al. 2020. Developing an interprofessional transition course to improve team-based HIV care for sub-Saharan Africa. BMC Medical Education, 20:499, doi:10.1186/s12909-020-02420-x