Logo image
Back
Feasibility of project ECHO telementoring to build capacity among non-specialist emergency care providers
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Feasibility of project ECHO telementoring to build capacity among non-specialist emergency care providers

Grace Wanjiku, Lindsay Dreizler, Gregory Bell and Benjamin Wachira
African Journal of Emergency Medicine, Vol.12(4), pp.352-357
12/2022
DOI: 10.1016/j.afjem.2022.07.012
PMCID: PMC9352275
PMID: 35945932
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.afjem.2022.07.012View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

•There is an urgent need to scale up training of the emergency care workforce.•Virtual education platforms provide the opportunity to extend emergency medicine education, especially in light of disruptions caused by COVID-19.•Project ECHO telementoring is a robust model that is amenable to emergency medical education.•This paper describes the use of Project ECHO telementoring for PoCUS training in Kenya.•We describe the challenges of implementation and potential ways to overcome them. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to global disruptions in emergency medicine (EM) teaching and training and highlighted the need to strengthen virtual learning platforms. This disruption coincides with essential efforts to scale up training of the emergency healthcare workforce, particularly in low-resource settings where the specialty is not well developed. Thus, there is growing interest in strengthening virtual platforms that can be used to support emergency medicine educational initiatives globally. These platforms must be robust, context specific and sustainable in low-resource environments. This report describes the implementation of Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), a telementoring platform originally designed to extend specialist support to health care workers in rural and underserved areas in New Mexico. This platform has now been implemented successfully across the globe. We describe the challenges and benefits of the Project ECHO model to support a Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) training program for health care providers in Kenya who do not have specialty training in emergency medicine. Our experience using this platform suggests it is amenable to capacity building for non-specialist emergency care providers in low-resource settings, but key challenges to implementation exist. These include unreliable and costly internet access and lack of institutional buy-in.
 Emergency care Project ECHO Telementoring

Details

Metrics

5 Record Views
8 Times Cited - Web of Science
Logo image