Mutually reinforcing strategies to improve blood sugar monitoring
 |
| Global Links is working with nurses at Ola During Children's Hospital, Freetown, Sierra Leone. |
Health partnerships often find that multiple, mutually reinforcing strategies are more effective than any single approach to changing health worker behaviour.
The HPS-funded Global Links Volunteer Programme sends UK
paediatricians on 6–12 month placements in East and West Africa, and
facilitates African doctors to undertake placements in the UK. The programme
aims to improve paediatric care in hospitals and communities, improve
paediatricians’ leadership skills and strengthen institutional links.
Volunteer UK paediatricians work on priorities agreed with
their host institutions. One reports from Karatina General Hospital in Kenya on
ways to encourage consistent neonatal blood sugar monitoring:
It can be difficult to change behaviours sometimes. In our
neonatal nursery in Kenya, blood sugar monitoring was poor. By attacking this
from several angles we were able to improve this. This consisted of:
1.
Teaching sessions with the nursing staff and the
medical officers on the importance of blood sugar monitoring in neonates.
2.
Positive reinforcement when it was done
appropriately.
3.
Use of a white board to facilitate the nursing
staff to remember to check blood sugars.
4.
Asking about blood sugars for every baby on the
ward round.
5.
Reviewing blood sugar monitoring at mortality
meetings attended by neonatal nurses and medical officers.
