Classroom and Hands-on Training for Health Care Workers
In support of the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Mongolian Ministry of Health’s (MoH) priorities and policies, FIRE has conducted training for rural health care providers across Mongolia in their local facilities since 2005. These trainings are currently conducted by visiting specialist from Ulaanbaatar and include multi-day classroom lessons and half-day hands-on “shadow training” sessions. Shadow training means that specialists from Ulaanbaatar work side by side with local doctors, teaching them techniques through a hands-on approach.
Our efforts have proved the most successful when done in conjunction with our Viral Hepatitis and Liver Cancer Screening Project while visiting rural communities. The classroom training sessions followed by the hands-on shadow training allows health care workers to put the training into action under the supervision and further guidance.
FIRE’s two training objectives include:
- Training Liver Specialists This training teaches local health care providers to assist their patients in making healthy lifestyle choices, to detect early stages of liver disease and to treat liver disease. To supplement this training, FIRE has created several materials in conjunction with our program partners. These materials include toolkits complete with a hepatitis treatment manual created by the National Center for Communicable Disease, and the “Physician’s Guide for Hepatitis B” written by the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University.
- Health Safety and Medical Waste Mangement To prevent the risk of disease transmission to health care workers, and eventually to the general public, FIRE has developed a systematic training program for healthcare workers. Since 2009, in accordance with the National Strategy for Improving Health Care Waste Management in Mongolia, FIRE has supported every state health care facility in 10 out of 21 provinces of Mongolia to improve their medical waste management and health safety practices. These improvements include training health care workers and providing on-site technical support and supply distribution. Training materials and supplies include instructional videos, posters, pamphlets, and necessary medical waste management supplies including biohazard waste bags, sharp boxes and medical waste containers. Please visit our Infection, Control, and Prevention page for more information.
Interactive Health Care Worker Training
As Mongolia has developed and modernized, the internet has also grown. Even the most remote areas can now access the internet. To further develop FIRE’s health care worker capacity building programs, we are working with partner organizations to create online training courses as well as interactive live training conducted via the internet by local specialists in Ulaanbaatar and international specialists. Additionally, we are establishing a physician’s mentor program to mentor Mongolian physicians in Ulaanbaatar with international physicians and Mongolian physicians in the countryside with physicians based in Ulaanbaatar. Sharing these new training models over the internet will quickly and dramatically increase the knowledge and abilities of health care workers in Mongolia, improving the quality of care across Mongolia and the overall health of all Mongolians.