Albert Einstein once rightly said, “Education is not the learning of the facts, but the training of the mind to think.” Learning is an ongoing process. One learns with all the experiences and people that they encounter on a daily basis. The world today is advancing at such a supersonic speed that what was in trend yesterday becomes a stale news tomorrow. Hence, there’s a continuous needs to innovate and reinvent yourself every day in order to survive. Capacity Building is one such process which helps us to achieve this.
Capacity Building in health is basically “the development of sustainable skills, organizational structures, resources and commitment to health improvement in health and other sectors, in order to prolong and multiply health gains many times over”. One of the main components of capacity building is Skills development, which entails creating and providing knowledge and training to professionals within the respective organizations.
Your staff might have a current level of competency and skill set which is at par with the current industry benchmarks but as the time progresses or as the industry sets its new yardsticks, the skills which were once sufficient and up to date become trivial by the then standards. So, the mantra is to continuously keep building your capacity.
A study done in Two Intensive Care Units of a 500 Bedded multi-specialty hospital of Delhi NCR echoed the same thing. The report showed the significant positive impacts a particular training program can have on improving the Knowledge and Practices of Critical care nurses.
During the study, a structured questionnaire was developed in consultation with WHO Standard Precaution of infection control. The findings of the study showed that the majority of the nurses were females in the age group of 20-30 and had good (KAP 81-90%) Knowledge, Attitude and Practice related to Standard Precautions for Infection Control. The results further stated that there is a significant impact of Knowledge and Attitudes of critical care nurses on their self-reported practices. The study also analyzed the impact of a training intervention on the KAP Scores of Nurses and showed that training has a positive impact and significantly increases knowledge levels related to standard precautions of Infection Control.
The study thus concludes that as Knowledge and Attitude of the Critical care nurses significantly affects their practices for infection control, it becomes imperative for the hospitals to ensure that the nurses have a good level of knowledge and positive attitude for infection control. By implementing regular training programs we can ensure that the staff has sound knowledge and positive attitudes and hence we can inculcate an environment of patient safety. Skill development will not only help in building capacity of efficiently trained staff in healthcare organizations but will also safeguard the basic right of patients of having a safe and healthy environment during their stay at the hospital.
“Everyday is a learning process. Life is a marathon that needs a lot of perseverance.”
-Ginny Kaushal,
Faculty, INLEAD
Images Courtesy- Google Images
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