1. Introduction
Studies, conducted in numbers of hospitals in Vietnam, indicated that health care workers have been working in dangerous environment with various types of occupational risks and hazards including occupational infectious and un-infectious ones such as SARS, H5N1, H1N1, tuberculosis, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS; risks related to chemicals, radiation and occupational stress, etc. The risks were especially high in health-care workers who were injured by sharp objects, such as needles, when they did there work. Although legislation on health care for health care workers have been developed and implemented, in fact, this issue has not been paid adequate attention.
Within framework of the Worker’s health protection project in the period of 2009 – 2011 funded by the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare through the World Health Organization, health care for health care workers is stated as one of 3 main objectives of the project. In order to achieve this objective, in 2009, the Hanoi school of Public Health was assigned to develop the Training curriculum on Occupational health and safety and occupational health prevention in health facilities. From August to November 2010, this training program was applied to train OHS officers from 15 provinces. The training course was aimed to improve knowledge and skills on occupational health and safety and occupational disease prevention in health care workers for provincial occupational health staffs and inspectors. After training, these staffs were expected to expand the training activity for their local provinces. The course was successfully implemented with number of activities.
2. Course’s Objective
Improve knowledge and skill on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and occupational disease prevention in health facilities for provincial OHS staff and build their capacity of conducting training course on OHS in health facilities to other staff in charge of OHS at lower levels.
2.2. Specific objectives
After the training course, participants were expected to be able to:
1. Introduce basic knowledge on occupational infectious risks, diseases and prevention.
2. Introduce basic knowledge on occupational noninfectious risks, diseases and prevention.
3. Develop OHS plan for health facilities in the province in accordance with current regulations and policies in Vietnam.
4. Conduct training course on OHS and occupational disease prevention in health facilities to OHS staff at lower levels.
3. Participants
3.1. Lecturers
Lecturers of the training course were OHS experts with rich experience in teaching from many academic institutions such as Hanoi school of Public Health, National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health and General Department of Preventive Medicine and Environment. The detail of lecturers who attended this course is presented in Appendix 4.
3.2. Participants
The participants of this course included OHS staff at provincial level including OHS staff in Provincial Preventive Health center and OHS inspectors. Those participants were from 15 provinces, including 5 provinces in the project (The list of provinces is shown in Appendix 3). There were 39 people attending this course and the details of the course’s participants were shown in Appendix 5.
4. Implemented activities
Following activities were implemented in the training program.
Activity 1: Develop proposal
Proposal of the training program was developed and submitted. The proposal was approved by the project and a contract of work was signed.
Activity 2: Preparation before training:
Following the first activity, the organizing team prepared for the training program, including following activities:
- Prepare list of participants, send invitations for participants and lectures.
- Prepare location and logistics.
- Develop detailed plan of training program
- Develop slides of lectures based on 2 training materials.
- Make copy CDs for provinces (2 CDs per province)
Activity 3: Centralized training in Hanoi in 4 days based on detailed curriculum.
Centralized training in Hanoi was the first phrase of the training course, which was a centralized training course in class, is conducted in Hanoi from August 01, 2010 to August 05, 2010.
In the training course, participants had been circulated and used 2 materials namely:
· “Occupational Health and safety and occupational disease prevention in health facilities” developed by the National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health in 2009.
· “Training curriculum on Occupational Health and safety and occupational disease prevention in health facilities” developed by Hanoi School of Public Health in 2010.
In addition, lecturers had provided handouts and references for each lecture. Participants were also encouraged to search references for further understanding.
Teaching and learning methods that was used in the training course were:
- Lecture
The participants were given 9 lessons in 5 following modules
Module 1: Prevention of occupational infectious diseases
Module 2: Prevention of occupational non infectious diseases
Module 3: Safety hazards and prevention
Module 4: Risk of exposure to medical waste and prevention
Module 5: Guide on occupational health and safety management and health care for health care workers
- Practice at health facility
All the participants visits Thanh Nhan Hopital and used check list of basic principles to prevent occupational infection for health care workers and medical waste treatment check list at hospital.
- Practice in class
· Scenario based learning: there were 3 scenarios in this course. Participants were divided into small group of 8 – 10, shared information and worked as team effectively. Each scenario was divided into smaller activities. Below was the process to work on each scenario:
+ Self study: based on scenario contents and tasks of each activities, participants applied their own knowledge and experiences as well as theories gained in class to search and study references to conduct given tasks.
+ Group discussion: after self study, participants discussed in group and share information to prepare the group’s presentation for each activity (by PowerPoint or overhead or Ao paper).
+ Presentation: after preparation, one group was randomly selected to give presentation. Other groups joined in discussion, asked questions and share information to learn from others.
Totally, the participants attended 32 training hours in the class and 1 field visit in Thanh Nhan Hospital.
Activity 4: Field work at provinces with support supervision in 3 months:
Participant had assignments in 3 months in their own provinces/cities. The expected outputs were (1) OHS plan for health facilities in the provinces/cities and (2) plan to conduct training course of OHS and occupational disease prevention in health facilities. During this period, lecturers went to each province and supervised the participants on doing their coursework. Lecturers also supported their participants in via email and phone.
Activity 5: Report of field work in 2 days in Hanoi
The participants attended a report session in Hanoi from 10-11 September 2010. 11 plans were presented in the session by 11 groups in 11 provinces. Other provinces had been sent their plans to organizing team.
Participants of the course also received their certificate of achievement in the report session.
Activity 6: Finalize training materials
After training, lecturers and authors (who develop training materials) had been reviewed, revised and finalized contents of training materials appropriately.
The details and schedule of all activities that was implemented in the program is stated in the Appendix 1.
5. Outputs:
- A training program for 15 provinces (13 provinces in the North, 1 in the Central and 1 in the South) including 5 provinces in the project.
- Total 39 provincial occupational staffs were trained.
- 15 province-wide plans on OHS for Health care workers for health facilities in 2011 were developed by participant. Some of those plans, including Bac Giang, Dong Nai, Hue, Nam Dinh v.v.. had been approved by their authorized organizations in the period of the training course. Other plans were present to the authorities and were expected to be approved.
- Similarly, 15 training plans for local OHS staffs on OHS and occupational disease prevention in health facilities in 2011 were Some of those plans had been approved by their authorized organizations in the period of the training course. Other plans were present to the authorities and were expected to be approved.
- Training package includes training curriculum and slides had been finalized. All the training materials including CDs of all PowerPoint files, training books and handouts had been transferred to participants.
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