Clinical Volunteer, Nepal
15 Nov 2007 18:18:00 GMT
Deadline date: 15 Dec 2007 |
| Organisation: | International Rescue Committee (IRC) |
| Location: | 218984 |
| Type: | temporary |
| Salary: | TBA (000's USD) |
| Description: | The International Rescue Committee is in the second year of an emergency health program in rural areas of Surkhet District, in the Mid-West Region of Nepal to improve access to and quality of health care services in remote Village Development Committees (VDCs). The health program is part of IRC’s country program in Nepal identifying gaps and addressing needs in the sectors of health, protection, and child protection. The Surkhet program focuses on sub-health posts in 20 VDCs and consists of several primary components:
Sub-health post building rehabilitation
One-time supply of drugs and equipment reinforced by revolving drug fund training Training of health staff and community volunteers Mobilization of local health management committee members SCOPE OF WORK: The Clinical Volunteer, under the direction of the Health Coordinator, will be responsible for teaching IRC Nepali medical staff how to upgrade clinical skills of Auxiliary Health Workers (AHWs) in the 20 VDCs. There is one AHW in each VDC, the only qualified medical staff, serving an average population of 4,000 people. IRC has four medical staff (two MBBS doctors and two health assistants – comparable to a physician’s assistant in the U.S.) tasked with directly upgrading AHW clinical skills through one-on-one, on-the-job training during week-long residence at each sub-health post. Two of the staff previously received a month of training from an American pediatrician in April-May 2007. The staff lack Western-standard training, but all have experience practicing medicine in rural Nepal. Specific tasks include: 1. Understand the context of Nepal’s sub-health posts: the needs and the problems, the differences and similarities with comparable facilities in other countries, the motivation (or lack thereof) of rural health staff. 2. Assess the clinical skills of the four IRC staff, including asking them to assess their own strengths and weaknesses are. 3. Work with IRC’s four medical staff to refresh and improve their own clinical skills. 4. Teach them good techniques to be used in training AHWs, both clinically and also addressing AHW attitudes. 5. Spend at least a couple of days in each of several selected sub-health posts, with the four IRC staff, giving them on-the-job practice in applying the teaching techniques they learned in the office. a. Help the IRC staff assess AHWs’ skills and plan the best way to improve those skills. b. Monitor how they work with AHWs in treating patients, giving them feedback either during the sessions or afterwards in private. c. In periods without patients, monitor how they make use of their time with AHWs, again giving feedback on what they can teach in the absence of patients. d. Encourage the IRC staff to learn from each other during the sessions in SHPs, by asking them to identify strengths in their colleagues’ performances. e. Assess how well the IRC staff do at teaching AHWs at the beginning of training and work with them to improve their weak points and reinforce their strengths, then assess them at the end to measure how much they improved. f. Give the IRC staff feedback on where they should concentrate in the future. 6. Write a brief report summarizing an assessment of progress made by the IRC staff and what they need to work on in the future. Include recommendations to IRC for how to improve its support to sub-health posts based on observations made during the weeks spent in training. The position will be based in the Surkhet district. Approximately one week will be spent in the district headquarters training IRC medical staff and preparing for the field. The following three weeks will be spent mostly in the field in remote areas, some of which can only be accessed by foot. As such, the candidate should be physically fit. Conditions in Nepali villages are often quite primitive, and the candidate should be prepared to adjust to life without electricity, toilets, or hot water. The position is a one-month, short-term volunteer assignment. REQUIREMENTS: Doctor (MD) with clinical experience in rural areas of developing countries. Experience training rural health staff in developing countries. South Asia experience preferred. Fluency in English, spoken and written. Nepali language skills a plus. Experience working in insecure and difficult locations. Ability to adapt to difficult physical conditions. Ability to lead a team of medical professionals, while at the same time learning from them. We request that all applications be completed on line at www.IRCjobs.org. Please indicate in your cover letter how you initially became aware of this vacancy. IRC does not set closing dates/deadline dates for applications, recruitment is ongoing until the position is filled. The IRC reviews all applications and you will be contacted directly if you are selected as a candidate. |
