Kenya overview
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine promotes and supports sustainable strategies to reduce maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity in Kenya. This is through investments and research aimed at strengthening the capacity of pre-service training institutions and midwifery and reproductive health educators and trainers. Additionally, we conduct implementation research on improving the quality of pre-service midwifery education and training through a bundle of interventions.
Midwifery and Reproductive Health training syllabi and curricula
We supported the national MoH’s-led pre-service taskforce to coordinate the updating and standardisation of the pre-service emergency obstetric and newborn care (EmONC) training content in the syllabi and curricula, at national level. On-going/completed interventions by the EmOC &QoC unit include the following,
- Support to the Nursing Council of Kenya and Clinical Officers Council to review and update the diploma midwifery and reproductive health training syllabi/core curricula respectively integrating the competency based EmONC. Currently, the Bachelor of Science in Nursing training syllabus is under review
- Support to Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) - responsible for educating over 80% of hospital healthcare workers including nurses and midwives in Kenya – to review and update their Midwifery and Reproductive health curricula
- Capacity strengthening of Midwifery and Reproductive health educators from public/KMTC, private and faith-based training institutions to deliver the updated curricula through a blended 2-day virtual and 2-day face-to-face skills training
- Providing Midwifery and Reproductive health training institutions with Obstetric and newborn care training equipment to support skills teaching and transfer linked to the updated curriculum
Research outputs
To improve the quality of Midwifery and Reproductive Health teaching/training in Kenya, the EmOC&QoC unit 1). conducted a study on educators’ perceptions of the early impact of COVID-19 on midwifery training in Kenya and 2). a before-after study to evaluate the capacity to deliver EmONC updated Midwifery and Reproductive Health training curricula in Kenya (manuscript number IJANS-D-22-00015).
A prospective RCT evaluating the effectiveness of a bundle of interventions supporting the implementation of the updated midwifery syllabi and curriculum is expected to be completed in 2022. 20 Kenya Medical Training Colleges offering diploma midwifery training will be randomized to the intervention (12) and control (8) study sites. A total of 36 and 24 educators will participate in the intervention and control arms respectively.
Midwifery Educator Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme
The EmOC & QoC unit has conducted a systematic review on available Midwifery Educator CPD programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The systematic review answers 2 key questions 1). What are the processes and systems for continuing professional development for midwives and midwifery educators in low-and-middle-income-countries? 2) How effective are these CPD programmes? Preliminary findings show that there is no known documented midwifery educator CPD programs led by the nursing and midwifery councils in LMICs including Kenya. In collaboration with the Nursing Council of Kenya, the program is developing the first midwifery educator continuous professional development (CPD) program for sustaining and improving the educators’ competencies in delivery of their teaching, assessments, mentoring and feedback to students. The systematic review is due to be completed and published in 2022.
Global Midwifery Education support
The EmOC & QoC unit is represented on the Strengthening Midwifery Education Project steering group with secretariat at UNFPA midwifery branch is developing, piloting, and evaluating midwifery education modules in Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillance, Comprehensive Abortion Care and Emergency Obstetric Care. These are expected to be completed in 2023.