Advanced nursing training in Ghana.

This ABC Nursing training programme is part of a larger project funded by the Tropical Health Education Trust (THET) with a grant to the Canniesburn Burn Unit, Glasgow, Scotland supporting the development of nursing care in burns and plastic surgery in Ghana.

Interburns has worked with Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra since November 2013 supported by Wales for Africa/Hub Cymru Africa which included collaborating with Dr Stuart Watson and colleagues from Canniesburn in November 2015 and April 2016 to deliver Essential Burn Care and assessments at Korle-Bu and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.

ABC is designed for nurses in resource poor settings and was developed by a mixed multidisciplinary team of specialist healthcare staff from UK, Ghana, Nepal, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.

ABC Nursing is always customised for the target country in which it is delivered. The course has already been revised and adapted following feedback in other countries as well as in collaboration with local faculty from Ghana. Additional sessions and group exercises were added to make sure the course was as interactive and practical as possible. ABC is accompanied by a handbook with 5 case studies, rewritten for Ghana and developed by local faculty to be relevant to the local context and challenges in sub-Saharan Africa and Ghana in particular.

The course was delivered over 5 days from 13-17th March 2017 at the Ghanaian Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) in Accra. 32 participants included nurses from Korle-Bu, Komfo Anokye and Tamale Teaching Hospitals and a number of smaller facilities, and 5 participants from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. Faculty included nurses, dieticians, a physiotherapist and several other staff from the UK, Ghana and India.

Interburns would like to thank the staff from Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital and Komfo Anokye who made the training a success, as well as the international faculty from the UK and India.

Special thanks are due to Dr Stuart Watson of Canniesburn/Resurge Africa and Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah from Korle-Bu for their role in funding and hosting the training programme respectively.