Annals of global health
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Annals of global health · Mar 2015
ReviewIdentifying interprofessional global health competencies for 21st-century health professionals.
At the 2008 inaugural meeting of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH), participants discussed the rapid expansion of global health programs and the lack of standardized competencies and curricula to guide these programs. In 2013, CUGH appointed a Global Health Competency Subcommittee and charged this subcommittee with identifying broad global health core competencies applicable across disciplines. ⋯ There is a need for continued debate and dialog to validate the proposed set of competencies, and a need for further research to identify best strategies for incorporating these competencies into global health educational programs. Future research should focus on implementation and evaluation of these competencies across a range of educational programs, and further delineating the competencies needed across all four proposed competency levels.
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Annals of global health · Mar 2015
A needs and resource assessment of continuing medical education in Haiti.
Haiti has a chronic physician shortage, and the country has been facing an increased disease burden since the 2010 earthquake and the subsequent introduction of cholera. In such resource-challenged settings, access to postgraduate medical education often is limited due to inadequate financial, structural, and academic resources. A crucial component to improved health in Haiti is the expansion of continuing medical education (CME). To our knowledge there have been no previous studies investigating the continuing professional development needs of Haitian physicians working in this context. ⋯ In this needs assessment, Haitian physicians identified lack of support for clinical decision making, poor access to CME activities, limited professional development, and absence of employment opportunities as key areas of need in support of their clinical and professional work.
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Annals of global health · Mar 2015
Near-peer emergency medicine for medical students in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: an example of rethinking global health interventions in developing countries.
During a 3-year time frame, a partnership between medical trainees in Haiti and the United States was forged with the objective of implementing an emergency response skills curriculum at a medical school in Port-au-Prince. The effort sought to assess the validity of a near-peer, bidirectional, cross-cultural teaching format as both a global health experience for medical students and as an effective component of improving medical education and emergency response infrastructure in developing countries such as Haiti. ⋯ Near-peer, cross-cultural academic exchange is an effective method of medical student-centered emergency training in Haiti. Limitations such as successfully implementing sustainability measures, addressing cultural differences, and coordinating between groups persist. This scalable, reproducible, and mutually beneficial collaboration between North American and Haitian medical trainees is a valid conduit for building Haiti's emergency response infrastructure and promoting global health.