A health care professionals training needs assessment for oncology in Uganda
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Date
2020
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Human Resources for Health
Abstract
Cancer incidence and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa are increasing and do account for significant
premature death. The expertise of health care providers is critical to downstaging cancer at diagnosis and
improving survival in low- and middle-income countries. We set out to determine the training needs of health care
providers for a comprehensive oncology services package in selected hospitals in Uganda, in order to inform
capacity development intervention to improve cancer outcomes in the East African region.
Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey using the WHO Hennessey-Hicks questionnaire to identify the training
needs of health workers involved in cancer care, across 22 hospitals in Uganda. Data were captured in real time
using the Open Data Kit platform from which the data was exported to Stata version 15 for analysis using the
Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Somers-Delta.
Results: There were 199 respondent health professionals who were predominately female (146/199, 73.37%), with an
average age of 38.97 years. There were 158/199 (79.40%) nurses, 24/199 (12.06%) medical doctors and 17/199 (8.54%) allied
health professionals. Overall, the research and audit domain had the highest ranking for all the health workers (Somers-D =
0.60). The respondent’s level of education had a significant effect on the observed ranking (P value = 0.03). Most of the
continuing medical education (CME) topics suggested by the participants were in the clinical task-related category.
Conclusion: The “research and audit” domain was identified as the priority area for training interventions to improve
oncology services in Uganda. There are opportunities for addressing the identified training needs with an expanded cancer
CME programme content, peer support networks and tailored training for the individual health care provider.
Description
Keywords
Cancer care facilities, Health care providers, Needs assessment, Sub-Saharan Africa, Training
Citation
Byamugisha, J., Munabi, I. G., Mubuuke, A. G., Mwaka, A. D., Kagawa, M., Okullo, I., ... & Ibingira, C. (2020). A health care professionals training needs assessment for oncology in Uganda. Human Resources for Health, 18(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-020-00506-7