HLA unveils programme to improve patient care outcomes in Nigeria

The Healthcare Leadership Academy (HLA) is offering the Patient-Centered Care (PCC) training programme aimed at equipping medical practitioners with knowledge and tools they need to become trans-formative leaders.

This includes motivated, front-line clinicians across all cadres and disciplines, doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, optometrists, physiotherapists and pharmacists.

There have been increasing cases of litigation, medical negligence cases coming to the fore. “In a bid to improve patients experience, safety and health outcomes in the country, we need to equip healthcare professionals with the tools they need to transform healthcare delivery in their respective facilities, impact their community and the health system positively” Hala Daggash, executive director of HLA said.

The PCC programme is delivered as a three-part master class series that focuses on developing communication skills; an understanding of patient safety, and core medico-legal and ethical principles; and an understanding of quality improvement and how to embark on and drive quality improvement initiatives within the workplace.

According to Daggash, a major distinguishing feature of the PCC programme is the implementation of a facility-based improvement project that provides participants the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills acquired during the class-based phase to solve real-life challenges within their various facilities.

The emphasis is on improving community strategy between healthcare practitioners and the patients, ensuring that our healthcare practitioners are aware of the ethical practices and rules as the landscape is changing. And also imbibe in our medical professionals a culture of improvement so that the overall patients experience is improved.

We hope that they would improve the overall patients’ experience in their facilities,” she added.

The course is delivered using proven adult learning methods including, facilitated discussions, role play activities and case studies specifically designed for the master class series.

Key staff from Alimosho general Hospital were beneficiaries of the PCC programme of 2017.

Madewa Adebajo, medical director Alimosho general hospital, Igando, Lagos, said PCC is about meeting the expectations of patients. We need to find out the challenges of patients by meeting them, and when we do it is necessary to sit down and postulate how we can meet those challenges.

“In Nigeria we are used to challenges and a lot of people have not made attempt on how to solve these problems, we just accept it, but when you make those changes, you realise that people start to embrace it and thinking it is possible.

“So what the HLA is doing is to train healthcare professionals on how to identify what the patients’ expectations are” said Adebajo

Abimbola Ajayi, assistant director, pharmaceutical service, Alimosho General Hospital, Igando, complaint management officer, quality facilitator and patients centered care drive for the hospital who spoke on their improvements said the facility chose to focus their effort on the project to address the high number of patient complaints on the difficulty of navigating the large hospital campus.

“Our improvement was on increasing accessibility to service points within the hospital.

“The project’s success has had a significant impact on health service delivery at their facility, increased monthly hospital patronage from 25,000 to more than 40,000 and decreased hospital waiting times and the number of complaints. Implementing this change idea and obtaining positive results earned the hospital a prestigious Service Charter Initiative award in 2017 and the Safe Care Quality Improvement Award 2017,” she said.

The Healthcare Leadership Academy is working to achieve similar success stories in other public and private health facilities in Nigeria by equipping and empowering healthcare providers with the requisite knowledge and tools to offer optimal healthcare services.