Basic Emergency Care training in East New Britain upskilling local clinicians to provide timely emergency care to their communities

Emergency and first contact healthcare workers who care for patients with acute illness or injury from East New Britain (ENB) in Papua New Guinea have participated in 2 weeks of Basic Emergency Care course training delivered at St Mary's Vunapope District Hospital and hosted by the ENB Provincial Health Authority in November.  

Over 30 health care workers, including nurses, Health Extension Officers (HEOs), community health workers and doctors, were involved as participants and trainers across three BEC courses including 2 provider courses and 1 'training of the trainer' ToT course  hosted by the ENB Provincial Health Authority. Participants were from a range of ENB health facilities including hospitals, urban clinics and health centres.

Images 1-3: Course participants take part in skills stations as part of the BEC Provider Course at St Mary’s Vunapore District Hospital, East New Britain.

The BEC course was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation for Emergency Medicine (IFEM).  It is designed for first contact providers of emergency care in resource constrained settings and provides a safe and structured approach to managing acutely ill and injured patients.  

This round of training was led by visiting master trainers Dr Fred Koha, Dr Clementine Goimba and Dr Garry Nou from Mendi and Port Moresby. A total of 11 participants received credentialing as BEC facilitators and trainers, creating a growing pool of staff with the capacity to deliver BEC course training across ENB and PNG more broadly.   

Images 4-5: Course participants take part in skills stations as part of the BEC Provider Course at St Mary’s Vunapope District Hospital, East New Britain.

Rabaul Provincial Hospital based emergency clinicians, Dr Ignatius Bolokon and Nurse Edwin Kaube, qualified as BEC master trainers and can now deliver training alongside the other newly qualified 6 registered facilitators and 2 provisional facilitators from Rabaul Provincial Hospital, Vunapope District Hospital, Palmalmal Rural Hospital, Warangoi Rural Hospital and St Mary's Nursing School. 

Image 6: Participants from the week 1 BEC provider and ToT courses with trainers and facilitators.

Dr Bolokon emphasised the value of the course for health workers located across the province. “It is such an important course to improve the quality of emergency care services from the Emergency Department at the Provincial Hospital to the local health centres out in the peripheries” he said. 

“Most of the participants are coming from the peripheral health facilities and this course provides the training necessary for them to deliver better emergency care where they are in the rural remote places.”

2 Laerdal Emergency learning lab training equipment packs kindly donated by Laerdal Global Health were distributed to enable the new BEC trainers to deliver training locally to other health care workers within the province.

Image 7: Participants and trainers from the week 2 BEC provider course  at the conclusion of the training

The courses were hosted by the ENB Provincial Health Authority and St Marys Vunapope Hospital in partnership with the Regional Emergency and Critical Care Systems Strengthening Initiative (RECSI) through the National St John Ambulance, and supported by PNG National Department of Health and the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.

RECSI is supported by the Australian Government through the Partnerships for a Healthy Region Initiative.