CEPD’s Director of Global and Indigenous Health, Dr. Anna Banerji, visited Ethiopia this month as part of a University of Toronto needs assessment venture. Here she shares her experience visiting with Continuing Education (CE) in mind.
“I had the pleasure of accompanying Dr. Claire Pain, five psychiatrists, and one psychiatry resident for a needs assessment for educational activities as part of the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC). Dr. Amy Bender who is with U of T’s Faculty of Nursing was working on expanding capacity in Nursing as well.
We met with the Associate Director for the Graduate Program, the Dean of Nursing, Associate Dean of Medicine, and the Dean of Pediatrics. The Dean of Nursing signed an agreement with U of T, Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), and the TAAC program for nursing CE based around critical care nursing and the development of a graduate program of nursing.
I spoke to the Chief of Pediatrics and they described their CE needs and the needs of specific sub-specialty programs. They have a comprehensive model, which includes collaborations with external universities, such as U of T, to train Ethiopian sub-specialists. Once they have two or three subspecialists trained in a particular specialty they are able to create their own involved subspecialty program.
We also had a meeting with Nana Osei from CUSO, who is the Ethiopian representative and lives in Ottawa. He is very interested in discussing collaboration on maternal child health in program development, and CE for nurses and physicians.
It was exciting and inspiring to meet many people who not only have vision, but have been able to implement educational activities in Ethiopia. Knowledge gained from studying this framework and model could potentially be applied to other parts of the world.”
