BUILDING SKILLS FOR QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

There is great impetus for quality improvement from the Family Health Bureau and WHO, and UNICEF in Sri Lanka. A team from Sri Lanka first attended the Regional Workshop for Improving Quality of Hospital Care for Maternal and
New-born Health, 6 – 8 February 2017, New Delhi, India, where the concepts were introduced. Following which the teams completed a QI project from the neonatology division in Anuradhapura on preventing readmissions due to dehydration Fever.

The QI movement was adopted in a big way when WHO organized a “Capacity Building Workshop for Point of Care Quality Improvement for mothers and new-borns in Improving facility-based care around child-birth from 22-24 August 2017 in Colombo. In this program teams from 7 hospitals from all over the country were invited to understand the methodologies and plan a QI project. The workshop started with a facilitators training on day 1 where local professionals were trained who then facilitated teams on day 2 and 3 with the help from experts from AIIMS, New Delhi and WHO.

The purpose of the training was to develop capacity at the national level for hands-on guidance along with the remote hand holding by the QI faculty. Six QI projects were planned after the QI workshop:

In July 2018, UNICEF Sri Lanka, WHO Country office, and Family health Bureau (FHB) and UNICEF ROSA organised workshops and in-facility visits for building capacity of doctors and nurses in select hospitals on Point of Care Quality Improvement (POCQI). First in this series was an experience sharing workshop on 16 July 2018, where staff from health facilities trained in 2017 shared their quality improvement projects.

COMPLETED IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS SHARED BY HEALTH FACILITIES IN REFRESHER TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE SHARING WORKSHOP, FHB AUDITORIUM, COLOMBO, 16 JULY 2018

FHB plans to scale up quality improvement covering one province at a time and building upon existing capacity in health facilities. In this regard, a workshop was conducted for new quality improvement teams in health facilities from southern province in Hikkaduwa on 18 and 19 July 2018. This workshop was held with assistance from local facilitators identified among previously trained healthcare providers, FHB and WHO/UNICEF. Facilitators conducted post-training follow up visits to these health facilities and each facility was assigned a coach for follow up support.

Maternal and New-born Care Programme in Sri Lanka is now focusing on further improvement of quality of MNH services with the objective of achieving SDG targets and reducing morbidities among mothers and babies. Family Health Bureau of the Ministry of health together with WHO and UNICEF has introduced ‘Point of Care Quality Improvement” techniques for hospital staff engaging in MNH services. The third national capacity building session was held in Anuradhapura on 17 and 18 of October for hospital staff from North Central province and Puttalam district with the participation of 65 staff.

SHARING QUALITY IMPROVEMENT EXPERIENCES

Coaching support to Sri Lanka for webinar: District general hospital, Kalutara, Sri Lanka has completed an improvement project on initiation of expressed breast use among new-borns admitted in intensive care unit. Dr Sandhya Doluweera from KalutaraHospital presented her work in a webinar on 12 October.