Development of emergency medicine and critical care masters program for nurses at Addis Ababa University, School of Medicine.

BACKGROUND: In Ethiopia, though all health care facilities have rooms available for ill and injured patients, emergency care has always remained suboptimal. Poor organization, lack of properly trained staff and lack of timely identification of the critically sick are the reasons. The role of nurses in the emergency rooms is very vital to im- prove patient survival. To address this pressing health care need and improve the emergency rooms (ER) nursing care, Addis Ababa University School of Medicine (AAU-SM) prioritized Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Nursing Training Program. The initial training began in September 2010 with a class of 20 students. Of these, 18 nurses successfully completed the Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Masters of Nursing program and graduated in 2012. OBJECTIVES: To review the Emergency medicine and Critical Care Masters training program for nurses developed and implemented at AAU-SM in partnership with the University of Wisconsin (UW) and the University of Toronto (UT) and to evaluate the progress and challenges to date. METHODS: An Emergency Medicine Task Force (EMTF) organized at AAU-SM developed a two years modular type of EM and Critical Care masters program curriculum for nurses that is co-implemented by faculty teachers from AAU-SM, UT and UW. In this article both the curriculum and other relevant materials are used as a resource. RESULTS: Thirty eight nurses have already graduated with Masters in Emergency Medicine and Critical Care. Equal number of trainees are currently in full-time training. Their skill and competency log book is going according to the curriculum expectation. CONCLUSION: This EM and Critical Care masters training program for nurses is successfully implemented. This program has also shown that the number and qualification of trained personnel capacity in low resource setting health care system can be effectively improved by partnership with developed training institutions.

Emergency medicine and its development in Ethiopia with emphasis on the role of Addis Ababa University, School of Medicine, Emergency Medicine Department.

INTRODUCTION: Globally Emergency Medicine (EM) is young discipline and even in developed countries it is about five decades old. In Ethiopia formal pre-hospital care or hospital based Emergency department (ED) development is a recent phenomenon and this article describes development of Emergency Medicine care in Ethiopia before, around and after Ethiopia millennium. METHODOLOGY: Documents related to emergency medicine development and implementation from different government and nongovernmental data sources are used as a resource for this article. RESULTS: Emergency Medicine task force (EMTF) has been established in Addis Ababa University (AAU) school of Medicine (SOM) in June 2006 and the taskforce has closely worked with Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) and Addis Ababa city council Health Bureau (AACCHB). In addition to the main actors many partners have contributed significantly to this initiative. Some of the developments were establishment of emergency departments in Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital (TASH) and the restructuring of EM service by FMOH. Emergency care has been considered as a crucial service in hospitals' service along with outpatient and inpatient services. Furthermore, Pre-hospital care initiatives have been commenced in Addis Ababa and expanded to the regions with a arrangement of one or two ambulances to small districts having 100,000 population. There have also been key achievement in human resource development, notably the establishment of EM residency and MSC in EM and critical care nursing. Prehospital care givers training programs in order to produce emergency medicine technicians (EMT) have been started in various regional health professionals training centers. Furthermore, EM module has been included in the current undergraduate medical education. The Ethiopian society of emergency professionals (ESEP) has been established with members from different categories of emergency medicine professionals. In all these developments the emergency medicine training center in the emergency department of AAU has played key role in the training of human resources in different categories. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The recent successes in EM development is due to concerted efforts of the FMOH, AAU SOM and AACCHB along with committed partners. Hence, it is concluded that consistent local efforts and relevant stakeholders support in EM has resulted in successful development of the field in the country.