KATE WOODHEAD RGN DMS reports on visits to Seychelles, in her role as a facilitator for the Friends of African Nursing (FoAN), which has resulted in the charity helping to create a set of national standards for perioperative practice.
Nurses are key healthcare workers, and in many nations in Africa there is a chronic shortage of workers due to migration, low status and pay, poverty and the ravages of HIV/Aids devastating the workforce in many areas including healthcare. There is very little money available to educate nurses beyond their basic training, so many countries are unable to source the expertise from within, and are also unable to fund the release of nurses from their hospitals to attend training. The result is that many nurses in the region receive no specialist skills training and virtually no continuing professional development (CPD).
The Friends of African Nursing (FoAN) charity was set up to deliver education and develop best practice in the perioperative environment for nurses in Africa, who have not had the benefit of continuing education opportunities that we have in the UK. The programme is specifically designed to enable nurses to work in the operating theatre environment with knowledge and skills suitable for this high risk, team-based area.
Founded in 2001, FoAN is a small UK-based charity run by healthcare volunteers dedicated to sharing knowledge and skills with colleagues in Africa. Charity status was achieved in 2006 and, since that time, FoAN has continued to manage its commitment and developed its capacity to deliver education to perioperative nurses in countries across Africa. To date, over 1,600 nurses have received training from the charity, in ten different countries.
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