Experiences of a healthcare provider attending Quality Improvement Trainings in June 2022 in Oyo State

I am a Clinical Instructor and Nursing Auditor working in Oyo State, Nigeria. Nursing has been a long-time ambition. Since I was young, when people were sick, I would be the one to care for them. I had an inbuilt passion to care for people and I love to teach.

The three days training has been full of a lot of packages. I learnt about safeguarding, caring for the vulnerable, quality improvement, ensuring that high standard care is given to pregnant and nursing mothers, giving good quality service which would improve the timing of their presentation i.e., they present earlier in the clinic, thus their health seeking behavior is improved because their needs are met and there is patient satisfaction. Patients would want to come back, once the care is good. I learnt how to identify problems, I learnt about different standards, I learnt about the audit cycle, how to plan, how to implement and how to always go back to re-access. I also learnt that when setting objectives and goals that it should be SMART, specific, measurable, achievable and realistic. I learnt root cause analysis especially those within my power, to always know the root cause of the problems and prioritize the problems.

With this training, I have learnt to be less judgmental, using the approach of no blame and no shame, I have been able to identify the difference between mentoring and supervision. Henceforth, I’d be more of a coach and mentor rather than supervisor.

Being a clinical instructor, I am part of the education committee where I organize in house trainings for staff. We have training every month; this is where I will implement the step down of what I have learnt. I also teach student nurses as I train them, I will input the lessons learnt from the QI training into the training of the student nurses to catch them young.

In my opinion the training will reduce morbidity and mortality rates in the state because over time, quality service results in better health care and then positive results.

We all know that change is very difficult, and people do not want to change, but we need to encourage people to change. I would also want to suggest that more supervision should be done, especially on the job, nurses that have been trained should be monitored to see the work is implemented, a follow up is needed.