« Older Newer »

Clinical Mentoring workshop held for our Nursing and Midwifery students in Southern Sudan

June 03, 2011 - South Sudan

by Sophia Nyame

by Sophia Nyame, RMF project partner with UNFPA in Southern Sudan

The teachers, students, and mentors of our Juba College of Nursing and Midwifery recently held a very succesful 3 day clinical mentoring workshop sponsored by the UNFPA on May 18th-20th in Juba, Southern Sudan, to build the skills of everyone involved in the clinic training of our students.

Background: Clinical Practice for nursing and midwifery students in training is essential in developing their skills and competencies for effective patient care. Students in clinical settings needs to be guided, supervised and mentored by equally qualified staff to bring out these competencies. Most nursing and midiwifery staff are good at what they do but might find it difficult to transfer their knowledge to others.

This may be as a result of lack of confidence, cultural issues, equipment and infrastructure,or lack of knowledge of the current trends in the profession, etc. As a result of the above, experienced nursing and midwifery staff can fail to pass along high standards of patient management to new staff in the clinical setting and over time forget and/or compromise these standards. In the Southern Sudan context, these issue are all true making teaching and learning in the clinical setting difficult (a supervisory follow up on students doing clinical practice revealed marked lapses between what is taught and what is actually practiced.) It is therefore of upmost importance to identify the right caliber of staff and equip them to mentor the junior (student) whilst in training to bridge these gaps.

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES:

To build the capacity of the indentified Clinical Mentors/Ward in charge of mentoring of students
To equip the Mentors/Wards with effective and competant mentoring skills
To maintain continuous monitoring and supervision of students at the practical sites
To help in the training the students

A total of twenty-five nurses and midwives who were supervising the students in the various wards (Maternity and Gynae, Ante Natal ward and Clinic, Surgical and Medical units, Emergency and Pediatric units) were brought together during this training. Among the twenty-five participants, three were midwives- this is as a result of the low number of midwives in the hospitals. The facilitators were tutors from the college, a doctor from the Juba Hospital and the project manager totaling six, the project assistant manager acted as the logistics officer during the training.

The staff of JCONAM and the project management sincerely appreciates and acknowledge UNFPA for the support given in funding and organizing this workshop. Also acknowledged are the officers from the Ministry of Health for their guidance and suggestions from planning to execution of this workshop. The hospital administrator of the Juba Teaching Hospital and Al Saba Children’s Hospital cannot be left out-for arranging and releasing their staff for the workshop. Finally, we would like to appreciate the nurses, midwives, and all the facilitators who worked very hard to make this dream come true.

For more information about the Juba College of Nursing and Midwifery Initiative please visit our website here

Categories: South Sudan or View All

Return to Top