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Low- and middle-income countries have much less than 20 surgical providers per 100000 population as recommended by the Lancet commission.
The Lancet Commission of Global Surgery 2015 documented that 5 Billion people lack access to safe surgical care
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Low- and middle-income countries have much less than 20 surgical providers per 100000 population as recommended by the Lancet commission.
The Lancet Commission of Global Surgery 2015 documented that 5 Billion people lack access to safe surgical care
Providing surgical care is challenging in these limited resource settings, where no help/ support is available for young rural surgeons, nurses and other colleagues practicing in these settings. They are isolated soldiers in the battleground and fear adverse consequences of a well-intended treatment and decisions. Academic as well as professional isolation adds to the burden of these providers. This reflects directly and indirectly into treatment delays, unnecessary referral to tertiary centers and loss of precious time and money for the patients and low retention of practitioners in limited resource settings.
Many of you have had the opportunity to work in limited resource settings and can relate to the needs for support while ‘practicing alone’ on the field, not just clinical but academic.
Providing surgical care is challenging in these limited resource settings, where no help/ support is available for young rural surgeons, nurses and other colleagues practicing in these settings. They are isolated soldiers in the battleground and fear adverse consequences of a well-intended treatment and decisions. Academic as well as professional isolation adds to the burden of these providers. This reflects directly and indirectly into treatment delays, unnecessary referral to tertiary centers and loss of precious time and money for the patients and low retention of practitioners in limited resource settings.
Many of you have had the opportunity to work in limited resource settings and can relate to the needs for support while ‘practicing alone’ on the field, not just clinical but academic.
We at the WHO collaboration center for Research in Surgical Care Delivery in LMICs, India and Program for Global Surgery and Social Change, Harvard, propose to build a network of “communities for practice ” (CoP) where we have a virtual platform to learn from each other and work together as a surgical provider community.
What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?
We are creating a virtual platform for network and database where colleagues can have access to a network of surgical care providers that includes surgeons, nurses, anaesthesia providers, physiotherapists, OT technicians and any other medical practitioners who provide surgical care.
The CoP also aims to break the silos of practice by interdisciplinary interactions between these groups for online clinical and academic sharing and collaboration. There has been a surge in webinars and online learning or training sessions following COVID19 pandemic. The busy rural and frontline surgical providers are not able to benefit from these due to time constraints.
The CoP thus also provides an ‘asynchronous’ learning resources and opportunities that the practitioners can utilise ‘whenever feasible for them’
How to participate and How does it work?
Any surgical care provider can become a participant of this community and join the network. We will start with small steps by creating a WhatsApp community/common group where colleagues can interact on various surgical practice related topics and domains. We will have an informal, non-hierarchical, respectful interaction through series of
Webinars
Shared resource material of guidelines, best practices, clinical protocols and news, blogs, podcasts
Research and collaboration opportunities
Celebrating professional achievements of participants as spotlight
Discuss clinical/ ethical or practice dilemmas or difficult situations (with deidentified patient information) with experts
Monthly newsletter highlighting activity of the month
Start your journey by joining us
Frontline Provider Community of Practice Registration Form
FAQs
Visit this section for some frequently asked questions that we have encountered as we begin this journey together
Start your journey by joining us
Frontline Provider Community of Practice Registration Form
FAQs
Visit this section for some frequently asked questions that we have encountered as we begin this journey together