One of the key aims of the GlobalSurg collaboration is to promote engagement in clinical audit and research projects. Only through active participation in these can we ultimately improve patient outcomes; yet around the world many frontline clinicians have little opportunity to engage.
Capacity building in audit and research is therefore vital to help facilitate better local understanding of current clinical practice, opportunities for improvement, and the best practice to be delivering within that local setting.
With this in mind, the GlobalSurg team have developed a new 2-day course aimed at teaching the basic principles and practice around undertaking audit and research, particularly in places where clinical audit, quality improvement and research training for medical undergraduates or junior doctors are limited. By building and supporting a sustainable global network of individuals with the skills required to lead and contribute to studies, we hope to change long-term engagement and participation in this vital component of clinical practice.
The new course offers practical and interactive training in formulating structured clinical questions, understanding the differences between audit and research, evidence searching, assessing the quality of audit and research, ethical considerations, and the analysis and presentation of results.
Rwanda has made great strides in recent years to build up its health system, although currently there are with fewer than 40 surgeons serving a population of 12 million people, and one medical school. Our enthusiastic local collaborators therefore offered the perfect base to trial out the new course, and we were pleased that this course and the faculty (Ed Fitzgerald, Aneel Bhangu, Tom Drake, James Glasbey, Ewen Harrison) were warmly received.
Thanks are due to our local lead, Alphonse Zeta Mutabazi for helping coordinate on the ground and organise the logistics, to Dr Georges Ntakiyiruta for his support at CHUK, and Professor Phil Cotton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Rwanda, for supporting us in running the course.
The development and delivery of this course in Rwanda has only been possible through funding provided from the University of Edinburgh Global Innovation Fund.
If you would like to support future courses, please visit our Givey page to donate to the SURG Foundation: https://www.givey.com/surg_foundation
If you would be interested in hosting this course at your institution in future, please drop us an email: [email protected]
Ed Fitzgerald
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