Southern Ethiopia - Gwent Health Link

Personal background and role in the Link

My professional background is in nursing, midwifery, midwifery education, teacher training, research and more recently, statutory supervision of midwives, quality assurance of professional education (nursing and midwifery) and policy development. I am currently employed by the Welsh Assembly Government and based with Healthcare Inspectorate Wales in Caerphilly.

I have travelled all my life and am familiar with conditions in less developed countries. Much of my travel has been in Asia and Africa and I have worked for a short period in Kenya however I had not been to Ethiopia prior to being invited to join the Link.

I was invited to join the Link in September 2007. I knew a little about the Link’s involvement in Ethiopia from Melrose and casually expressed a long held desire to undertake work of this nature. I was surprised and delighted when a week or two later I had an email from Melrose to ask if I was serious about my intent and if so, she and Carole would like me to participate in the October midwifery skills workshop to be held in Awassa. My role would be to introduce ‘principles of teaching and learning’ to the nurse and midwife workshop participants. I was very pleased to accept. My Chief Executive, Dr Peter Higson, was very supportive and in keeping with the Assembly’s policy on supporting staff to undertake voluntary work and the ‘Wales for Africa’ initiative, I was granted two weeks professional leave to join the team that went to Ethiopia in October/November 2007. My role on that occasion was to lead three sessions on ‘the principles of teaching and learning’ during the workshop and to support Carole, Melrose and Jane by facilitating small group work in other sessions.

Following my first visit I have become more involved in the Link. Apart from attending Link meetings, I represented the Link at a meeting with THET/other links and the Open University last year and attended the recent ‘Cardiff for Africa’ conference. I was also asked by Biku to contribute (with Biku, Carole and Melrose) to the development of a proposal to the National Assembly for Wales for funding for 2008/09; to the combined links/THET submission to the Lottery Fund for funding support (with Biku, Carole and Melrose); to the writing of a proposal to undertake an evaluation of the work of the Link which was submitted to the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET), the funding body on this occasion (with Biku, Melrose and Peter). The THET evaluation bid was successful - £5000 with a possible further grant. The evaluation, i.e. collecting and analysing data and writing the evaluation report to be submitted to THET on behalf of the Gwent Ethiopia Link, is now a major part of my contribution. The outcome of the other two funding bids is still awaited.

Specific role/contribution to the work in this visit (March 2008)

My role in this visit was to collect information/data/evidence for the evaluation report and to establish some baselines for future assessments.

I was aware from my first visit that circumstances and conditions in the Health Centres might make it very difficult to collect consistent and similar data in each and ‘interviews’ could prove difficult to arrange before hand and/or conduct during a visit. However I was very keen that the evaluation approach was as robust as possible, despite potential difficulties. In preparation therefore and to maximise the opportunities for collecting systematic data/information ‘in the field’, particularly in the three Health Centres at Yirgacheffe, Alaba and Wondoganet, I devised some written schedules/checklists re:

• ‘evaluation data to collect at March 2008 visit’
• ‘focus group interviews/discussions – community/health centres etc’
• ‘outline interview schedule – other personnel’
• ‘outline interview schedule – student midwives (and other students)’

The interview schedules were to be used as a guide if I was able to arrange some interviews.

I also drew up a template with broad headings for Link colleagues to use when writing their individual report of the visit. Although everyone has a different role to play when visiting Ethiopia and each is responsible for evaluating their own work and writing an individual report, I felt it was important for overall evaluation purposes if a similar template was used. The template aims to relate individual contributions to the aims and objectives of the work of the Link. Melrose, Biku, Peter and Carole provided very helpful comments on my drafts of the schedules/template and these were incorporated into the versions used.

I took the schedules/checklists to Ethiopia to refer to during the visit. A report template was sent to Link colleagues who were also going to Ethiopia in March so that they could pilot test it when writing their individual March visit reports.