Health Training Needs at Primary Care Level Health Facilities in Rural Western Uganda

Introduction: Continual education is recognized worldwide as a tool for the professional development of health care practitioners. It is however effective when the training targets the appropriate needs of the target beneficiaries. This study was therefore aimed at identifying priority training needs of Primary Care Level health professionals in rural Western Uganda. Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional survey among 35 rural community health facilities represented by their managers in rural Western Uganda. Participants were invited to Mbarara University of Science and Technology and responded to a self-administered questionnaire and also participated in qualitative group discussions guided by Facilitators from the Community Based Education and Research Services unit within the Community Health Department of Mbarara University of Science and Technology. Priority health training needs were determined based on the computed weighted scores. Results: The majority of managers of rural primary care level health facilities were medical officers by the level of training (51.43%) and male by gender (68.57%). Priority health training needs identified were child health and maternal health with total weighted scores of 12.0 and 10.9 respectively. Qualitatively, emerging themes included;leadership and management, and supervisory roles during student field attachments. Conclusion: Priority health training needs at rural Primary Care level health facilities were child health, maternal health, leadership and management, and supervisory skills. There is dire need to train rural primary care level, health professionals. In-service training based on identified needs should be offered by MUST in partnership with regional stakeholders. This is likely to enhance the quality of services provided by rural primary care level health facilities.

Tree: Reducing the use of restrictive practices on psychiatric wards through virtual reality immersive technology training

BACKGROUND Restrictive practices(RPs)are defined by measures linked to physical and chemical restraints to reduce the movement or control behaviours during any emergency.Seclusion is an equal part of RPs intended to isolate and reduce the sensory stimulation to safeguard the patient and those within the vicinity.Using interventions by way of virtual reality(VR)could assist with reducing the need for RPs as it could help reduce anxiety or agitation by way of placing users into realistic and immersive environments.This could also aid staff to and change current RPs.AIM To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of using a VR platform to provide reduction in RP training.METHODS A randomised controlled feasibility study,accompanied by evaluations at 1 month and 6 months,was conducted within inpatient psychiatric wards at Southern Health National Health Service Foundation Trust,United Kingdom.Virti VR scenarios were used on VR headsets to provide training on reducing RPs in 3 inpatient psychiatric wards.Outcome measures included general self-efficacy scale,generalised anxiety disorder assessment 7(GAD-7),Burnout Assessment Tool 12,the Everyday Discrimination Scale,and the Compassionate Engagement and Action Scale.RESULTS Findings revealed statistically significant differences between the VR and treatment as usual groups,in the Everyday Discrimination Scale items Q8 and Q9:P=0.023 and P=0.040 respectively,indicating higher levels of perceived discrimination in the VR group.There were no significant differences between groups in terms of general self-efficacy,generalised anxiety disorder assessment 9,and Burnout Assessment Tool 12 scores.A significant difference was observed within the VR group for compassionate engagement from others(P=0.005)over time.Most respondents recorded System Usability Scale scores above 70,with an average score of 71.79.There was a significant reduction in rates of RPs in the VR group vs treatment as usual group with a fluctuating variability observed in the VR group likely due to external factors not captured in the study.CONCLUSION Ongoing advancement of VR technology enables the possibility of creating scenarios and simulations tailored to healthcare environments that empower staff by providing more comprehensive and effective training for handling situations.

Epidemiological Profile of Stress among Health Professionals in Northern Benin in 2021

Objective: To study the epidemiological profile of stress among health professionals in North Benin in 2021. Methods: It was a cross-sectional and descriptive study with health professionals in the Parakou-N’dali and Tchaourou health zones. These two areas have a population of 462,942 inhabitants served by two university hospitals, three area hospitals and 19 health centers. Sampling was exhaustive by free and informed consent. The data was collected through a questionnaire. Studied socio-professional characteristics and stress. The level of stress was assessed using the Karasek questionnaire. Results: Of 813 caregivers approached, 692 were investigated. The participation rate was 85.1%. The average age was 38 years old. Subjects aged 28 - 38 were more numerous, as were those aged between 1 and 10 years. The prevalence of stress was 73.8%. Its level was high at 17.8% and very high at 4.5%. Women were affected (76.6%) than men (70.7%). Within the professional category, midwives were the most affected (82.5%). Respondents from the denominational sector were 90.8% reached. Conclusion: Professional stress is endemic in health facilities in northern Benin, particularly faith-based ones. Action must be taken to reduce it.

Why Multi-Sectoral Approaches Are Rarely Applied in Community Health Interventions in Some Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa?

The objective of this work is to analyze the reasons why community health interventions in Africa do not consider multisectoral approaches. To achieve it, we perform a mini-review of health development policies and plans available online in seven countries from four regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, two main reasons have been highlighted. First, national strategic plans and policies for health development, in their formulation, neither sufficiently emphasize multisectoral approaches, nor sufficiently make these approaches operational in strategies and activities. Second, the mindset of health professionals due to their initial training orientation based on the biomedical approach, stands that disease is only a result of a physiological imbalance in the body;therefore, to restore health, such an imbalance only needs sophisticated procedures and interventions to be overcome. Such an orientation completely ignores the social, cultural and economic context in which the individual lives, which has an irretrievable influence on the health imbalance. However, health, influenced by the conditions in which people are conceived, born, grow, live, work and aged, cannot be effectively improved in a sustainable way without taking into account all these conditions. Whence the importance of approaches based on every sector of human activity that influences the living conditions.

Efficacy of Williams LifeSkills Training in improving psychological health of Chinese male juvenile violent offenders:a randomized controlled study

This randomized controlled study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of Williams Life Skills Training（WLST） as a means ofimproving the psychological health of Chinese male juvenile violent offenders.Sixty-six participants were assigned randomly to receive the usual intervention plus 8 weeks of WLST（study group,n = 33） or only the usual intervention（control group,n = 33）. We found that the study group exhibited significantly decreased State-Trait Anxiety Inventory（STAI X-1,X-2） STAX2 scores and Trait Coping Style Questionnaire（TCSQ） negative scores,and increased Interpersonal Support Evaluation List（ISEL） tangible scores from baseline to 9 weeks later（P 〈0.01）. In addition,a between-group difference in changes of TCSQ negative score was observed at the end of week 9（P 〈0.05）. These fi ndings suggest that WLST can improve trait anxiety,coping style,and interpersonal support in male Chinese juvenile violent offenders.

DAMS:A Distributed Analytics Metadata Schema

In recent years,implementations enabling Distributed Analytics(DA)have gained considerable attention due to their ability to perform complex analysis tasks on decentralised data by bringing the analysis to the data.These concepts propose privacy-enhancing alternatives to data centralisation approaches,which have restricted applicability in case of sensitive data due to ethical,legal or social aspects.Nevertheless,the immanent problem of DA-enabling architectures is the black-box-alike behaviour of the highly distributed components originating from the lack of semantically enriched descriptions,particularly the absence of basic metadata for data sets or analysis tasks.To approach the mentioned problems,we propose a metadata schema for DA infrastructures,which provides a vocabulary to enrich the involved entities with descriptive semantics.We initially perform a requirement analysis with domain experts to reveal necessary metadata items,which represents the foundation of our schema.Afterwards,we transform the obtained domain expert knowledge into user stories and derive the most significant semantic content.In the final step,we enable machine-readability via RDF(S)and SHACL serialisations.We deploy our schema in a proof-of-concept monitoring dashboard to validate its contribution to the transparency of DA architectures.Additionally,we evaluate the schema’s compliance with the FAIR principles.The evaluation shows that the schema succeeds in increasing transparency while being compliant with most of the FAIR principles.Because a common metadata model is critical for enhancing the compatibility between multiple DA infrastructures,our work lowers data access and analysis barriers.It represents an initial and infrastructure-independent foundation for the FAIRification of DA and the underlying scientific data management.

Curriculum Development for FAIR Data Stewardship

The FAIR Guidelines attempts to make digital data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable(FAIR). To prepare FAIR data, a new data science discipline known as data stewardship is emerging and, as the FAIR Guidelines gain more acceptance, an increase in the demand for data stewards is expected. Consequently, there is a need to develop curricula to foster professional skills in data stewardship through effective knowledge communication. There have been a number of initiatives aimed at bridging the gap in FAIR data management training through both formal and informal programmes. This article describes the experience of developing a digital initiative for FAIR data management training under the Digital Innovations and Skills Hub(DISH) project. The FAIR Data Management course offers 6 short on-demand certificate modules over 12 weeks. The modules are divided into two sets: FAIR data and data science. The core subjects cover elementary topics in data science, regulatory frameworks, FAIR data management, intermediate to advanced topics in FAIR Data Point installation, and FAIR data in the management of healthcare and semantic data. Each week, participants are required to devote 7–8 hours of self-study to the modules, based on the resources provided. Once they have satisfied all requirements, students are certified as FAIR data scientists and qualified to serve as both FAIR data stewards and analysts. It is expected that in-depth and focused curricula development with diverse participants will build a core of FAIR data scientists for Data Competence Centres and encourage the rapid adoption of the FAIR Guidelines for research and development.