IGNOU AHF India Cares MOU 'HIV Medics'
Media Brief
HIV Medics: Training Community Members as Healthcare Workers in the Fight against AIDS
HIV Medics are paraprofessional healthcare workers trained to assist clinicians in the provision of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV who will provide initial patient screenings, complete patient histories and refer patients to physicians for physical exams and initiation of ART. They also draw blood, dispense medications and provide medication adherence counseling and HIV testing. Shifting of these aforementioned tasks to the HIV Medics frees up physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals for more complex tasks and enables them to see more patients. These factors contribute to the overall goal of increasing the number of people receiving ART and improving the quality of care.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest provider of specialised HIV medical care in the
COURSE WORK OVERVIEW
Didactic Knowledge
Students participate in six weeks of classroom teaching
Clinical Skills
Students receive six weeks of clinical clerkships. The first two weeks are in the classroom where students learn and practice the following simple clinical skills:
Guided Clinical Practice
The remaining four weeks of clinical clerkships are spent on guided practice of knowledge and skills. Students rotate through the following types of facilities under the guidance of physicians, clinical officers and nurses.
- HIV/AIDS primary care clinics
- Hospital HIV and TB inpatient wards
- Outreach Programmes
- Counselling and testing programmes
- Rural health centers
Students return to the classroom once a week during rotations to discuss cases and experiences.
At the end of the six-week didactic training programme, a comprehensive midterm exam is given to assess student learning. The second six-week section of the training is a clinical practicum. Students participate in rotations designed to give them hands-on primary care experience with HIV positive patients, HIV and TB inpatients, opportunistic infection treatment, side-effect management and adherence counselling. At the end of the 12 week training session, the students are given a comprehensive examination that they must pass in order to graduate and receive their certificates. After graduation, the HIV Medics work full-time at the clinic level where they are supervised by clinic staff and receive regular continuing medical education (CME) credits.
HIV Medics Program
AHF/India Cares’ shall reach out to partners providing HIV care and psychosocial services to identify candidates to attend the training. Minimum requirement is high school leaver’s certificate education. Candidates have to make a written application for the training and undergo an oral interview.
Candidates who qualify then enroll to undergo a 3 month course of which 6 weeks is didactic and another 6 weeks of practical clinical rotation in sites providing HIV/AIDS care and these include hospitals, Community based organizations, NGOs and
Lessons Learned from AHF International Experiences
- HIV Medics program offers a practical hands-on solution to increase the human capacity needed to expand HIV treatment and care in resource-poor countries.
- HIV Medics program can be replicated in other developing countries with high HIV prevalence.
- HIV Medics represent a unique cadre
Recommendations
- With full supervision from nurses, doctors and clinical officers, HIV Medics have freed the hands of nurses to provide critical care to ill clients while the Medics assist with counselling, triage, adherence education, dispensing, HIV testing, home visits.
- This shifting of tasks has enabled clients to be quickly scaled up onto ART instead of being on the waiting list for long. It has also eased staff burn out as there are extra hands to fill the gap.
- Ultimately it has improved on quality of care as more time can be spent with individual patients.
- There is further need to train more lay providers considering the short time it takes to complete the training, good quality of work they do and the urgent need to fill the human resource gap if we are to achieve UNIVERSAL ACCESS BY 2010.
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