The School of Public Health, University of Health and Allied Sciences (SPH) held a training workshop on March 23 and 24 for its preceptors on the various aspects of health service provision in the training of its students, especially in public health and health system practices. The programme, in five modules, sought to orient preceptors on the competencies that SPH students are required to attain during Vocational Training.

 

The first module covered Preceptorship. Professor Paul Amuna (left), Acting Dean of SPH, said preceptors as coaches and supervisors, who provide support to students during their vocational training, need to be oriented on their unique roles and the importance of providing students with theory and practice sessions. He said, “They have the critical role of providing individual attention to student's learning needs, and feedback regarding performance.”

 

In the Health System Management and Administration module, preceptors were expected to relearn how to engage students on the roles and responsibilities of health administration and management in efficient running of facilities.

In the Disease Prevention and Health Promotion module, preceptors were trained to among other things, engage students on logistics management and vaccine forecasting, and to carry out cold chain inventor. They were also to enhance students’ ability to conduct nutrition surveillance in communities, as well as engage students to identify and evaluate socio-cultural practices and beliefs that affect the health of the population.

The Disease Surveillance module took preceptors through how to support students to apply appropriate formats and reporting tools at various units, based on timelines for reporting priority diseases and the timely collection, review, validation and communication of data. 

The Community Engagement and Practice module exposed the preceptors to introducing students to primary health care systems, notably CHPS, health centers and hospitals and helping students practically understand the processes involved in community entry and conducting community entry exercises.

At the end of the two-day training, Professor Amuna said the session had exposed the facilitators to a wide range of information within the Ghana health sector, which Management plans to embed within the School’s curriculum. He also added that it had generated quality feedback from the preceptors.