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Increasing the number of health workers trained in treating trauma and musculoskeletal impairment in East, Central and Southern Africa.

Primary Trauma Care Training in Rwanda © University of Oxford
Primary Trauma Care Training in Rwanda
PTC has made me help and save lives of trauma patients
- Training course participant

The COOL programme ran over 50 Primary Trauma Care courses in COSECSA countries 2012-2016 (around five in each country), in partnership with Primary Trauma Care Foundation together with COSECSA representatives, PTC local organising committees and numerous local and UK volunteer instructors.

 

 

December 2012 - March 2017:

  • 50+ PTC provider courses have been delivered across 9 COSECSA countries
  • 2000+ health professionals from 160+ district and referral hospitals have been trained in PTC
  • 550+ new local PTC instructors have been trained.
  • 110+ senior UK and COSECSA doctors have been involved delivering PTC training.

Primary Trauma Care (PTC) Courses

Trauma Training in COSECSA countries

TRAINING REPORTS

COURSE OUTLINE

The training has really been very useful to me and I would recommend that more health workers are trained , especially in developing countries with the poor state of roads and transport systems
- Training course participant

The Primary Trauma Care course has been developed for emergency trauma care and prevention in settings with limited or no access to high-tech facilities. The PTC course takes two days and is followed by the instructor course which lasts one day. The new instructors are then invited to lead a second two-day PTC course, coached by the original team. In total, for those who become instructors, this 2-1-2 pattern lasts a total five days. The course is aimed at all levels of health workers and first responders and in new areas it usually begins with senior doctors.

Fully revised and updated Primary Trauma Care Manuals were published in February 2015.

Developing Training Capacity

The initial PTC courses in each COSECSA country were organised and led by teams of experienced PTC instructors and local faculty, in coordination with COSECSA representatives, followed by a transition to local PTC committees in each country who are prioritising and organising subsequent courses to cascade the training in each country, with the aim of reaching areas in most need of trauma training. Inter-COSECSA country exchange of trainers was encouraged to strengthen regional partnerships and consistency in training.

Training Outcomes

We reported our findings on the educational and clinical outcomes of the trauma training in these peer-reviewed publications:

Featured article

Delivering a sustainable trauma management training programme tailored for low-resource settings in East, Central and Southern African countries using a cascading course model

Selected Publications