Lilongwe District Health Office (DHO) says palliative care training for nurses and clinicians is important because the health workers are able to gain knowledge that will help them to properly assist palliative care patients in their health facilities.
Yahaya Asidi who is a clinical palliative provider at Bwaila Hospital made the remarks at the hospital on Thursday, 1st June, when Global Health Corps, Lilongwe DHO and Palliative Care Association organised training for health workers in Lilongwe.
Asidi said the training was aimed at empowering clinicians and nurses with knowledge on how to handle palliative care patients and treat the patient’s pain and any other issues associated with the patient’s illness.
“We believe that the health workers will benefit from the knowledge and the hospitals will also benefit because they will have health workers who know what to do at any particular time in terms of treating patients with chronic illness. Patients will also have confidence in the health workers,” said Asidi.
According to Asidi, when handling a patient with chronic disease, a health worker is supposed to inform a patient the disease they are suffering from, whether it is curable or not and what the hospital is able to do in order to manage the disease.
Kondwani Chikasema, a clinical officer St Kizito Health Centre at Mtsiriza in Lilongwe, said following the training he has received, the health centre will now be able to adequately assist patients with chronic diseases.
“By using the skills we have gained from here, we will gain the trust of patients because they will see that we can properly assist them.
“From here, we will be encouraging community members to be taking palliative care patients to our health facility,” said Chikasema.
Global Health Corps (GHC) supported the two-day training which attracted healthcare providers from seven health centres across Lilongwe including Area 25, Area 18, Mitundu, Kabudula and St Kizito.
GHC country director for Malawi Symon Simkoko said an assessment that was conducted revealed that there are gaps in terms of knowledge and skills among providers and GHC felt the need to train the providers.
“We need to have more stakeholders to come in and support palliative care services. We are talking about people with chronic diseases, they need a lot of care to alleviate their suffering,” said Simkoko.
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