HEALTH care provision in Dominica and Saint Lucia received a major shot in the arm with the completion of a one-week training course at the University Hospital Center of Martinique (CHUM) from last weekend.
Eight nurses from St. Jude’s, Tapion and Victoria Hospitals in Saint Lucia together with two from Princess Margaret in Dominica were hosted by the department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the CHUM.
The purpose of the training programme was to provide assessment and management of current pathologies, and also to advance the network of collaboration between the CHUM and hospitals of the region.
The CHU has established a cooperation commission, headed by Dr.DaborResiere, Toxicoligist, Emergency Medicine and Critical Care specialist in the department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care. Dr.Resiere is also the President of the Caribbean Doctors Association, a French-registered non-profit Association dedicated to socio-medical interventions in the Caribbean. The three pillars of this platform are: training, teaching and transport (TTT). Transport in this context refers to medical evacuations to the ICU in Martinique.
This is the latest event in a series of training programmes, lecture presentations and official visits by the CHUM and Dr.Resiere to both countries under the CHU regime of regional medical cooperation. This cooperation has been facilitated by the active participation of medical professionals from both the public and private sectors in Dominica and Saint Lucia. French law permits their hospitals to have direct operational relationships with both local and foreign hospitals.
This programme offers a basic orientation of the critical care set-up, policies, nursing practice, nursing procedures, responsibilities and knowledge.
At the end of the five days general orientation training session the participants will be able to carry out the following tasks:
o Assess appropriately critically ill patients
o Airway management
o Mechanical ventilation
o Arterial catheters and their use in critical care and a step by step guide on how to remove an arterial catheter
o Central venous catheters and their use
o Infection control & hygiene, nosocomial infection
o Preparation and administration of IV therapy
o Communication with relatives, patients and others in ICU
o Critical care nursing (ICU nurse duties, role nurse ICU)
o Inotropic drug use
The programme received unanimous acclaim from the participants, and was conducted in English. There was widespread coverage in the local press, as healthcare cooperation is high on the agenda of recent accords between the OECS and Martinique.
The history of healthcare cooperation between the CHUM and the islands was recently highlighted in the West Indian Medical Journal of the University of the West Indies.