This project will train five nurses to become mid-level providers in Emergency Care in rural Uganda. GECC educates nurses, through a sustainable train-the-trainer model, to manage patients in their communities to close a crucial gap in patient care. This project addresses the critical shortage of trained healthcare providers to prevent numerous deaths from treatable causes in Uganda. Once trained, these Emergency Care Practitioners will treat over 50,000 patients over their careers.
Every day in Uganda, hundreds of people, including many children who are particularly vulnerable, die from illnesses and injuries that are completely preventable. The World Bank recommends that countries have at least one physician per 1,000 people, but Uganda has just one physician for every 10,000 people. The lack of trained personnel means that sick or injured adults and children wait for long periods of time to see a doctor (over 24 hours), resulting in avoidable death and disability.
GECC provides advanced training in emergency care to nurses, in order to increase access to care where there are severe physician shortages. Nurses are more plentiful than physicians in rural Uganda, and training nurses is less expensive and time-intensive than training doctors. With the proper training, these Emergency Care Practitioners (ECPs) can provide a level of care equivalent to that of a physician and can significantly reduce the amount of time patients are required to wait.
In rural Uganda, even at a hospital, patients wait for hours or even days to see a doctor. Many die while waiting. GECC trains ECPs to immediately see all sick patients coming to the hospital. With quality care, many patients' lives are saved, including many children who are particularly vulnerable. Saving a patient's life can also save the economic well-being of his family. One ECP will treat at least 50,000 patients over her career, having a beneficial ripple effect on entire communities.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
