The core curriculum for training Sierra Leonean health workers includes modules
about providing excellent health care.
Woven throughout every module are two more things:
How to teach and how to implement change.
MOMS CHW role has four main aspects:
- Be the bridge between the people and the clinics.
- Provide evidence-based maternity care.
- Teach the women, men, and children how to be healthier.
- Solve problems in the community.
- Kindness
- Confidentiality
- Team player
- Role model
- The role of the MOMS Community Health Worker
- Staying healthy: Sanitation and Preventing Infection
- Staying healthy: Nutrition and Hydration
- Staying healthy: Preventing Sexually Transmitted Diseases
- Staying healthy: Planning to Have Children
- Human Bodies: Overview of Anatomy and Physiology
- Human Bodies: Women’s Reproductive Anatomy and Physiology
- Human Bodies: Conception
- Human Bodies: Signs and Symptoms of Pregnancy
- Human Bodies: Fetal Development
- Prenatal Care: Gaining a Woman’s History
- Prenatal Care: Conducting a Prenatal Examination
- Prenatal Care: Supporting a Healthy Pregnancy
- Labor and Birth: Supporting Normal Labor and Delivery
- Labor and Birth: Providing Immediate Postpartum Care
- Labor and Birth: Preventing and Treating Postpartum Hemorrhage
- Postpartum Care: Examining a newborn
- Postpartum Care: Breastfeeding
- Postpartum Care: To Six Weeks
- Organizing for Change: Solving Problems
We must replace our visual aids periodically. High humidity and heat encourage mold; the lamination on our charts peels off after a few years. Models break or screws get lost. So we budget to replace and upgrade some visual aids yearly. Generous donors have given us great models and simulators, which help us teach better.
Because we teach at two adjacent sites simultaneously, we need two sets of visual aids. We store our visuals, neatly labeled, in four extra large suitcases.
Training Trainers and Staff
Our train-the-trainer program provides healthcare or public health workers with a rich understanding of relevant learning theories, contextual depth for the content, and a lot of practice using effective teaching methods. So we have lesson plans to guide their learning, too. Only after student trainers prove their skill through many practice sessions and examinations do they receive a certificate and may work as a full part of the team.
We have helped our staff further their education. They find appropriate programs, we discuss it, and find ways to help them learn what they need to know for MOMS to succeed as a Sierra Leonean organization.