Date of Award

Fall 2024

Project Type

Clinical Doctorate

College or School

CHHS

Department

Nursing

Program or Major

Doctorate of Nursing Practice

Degree Name

Other

First Advisor

Cathleen Colleran

Second Advisor

Madeline Ross

Abstract

Background: Team Rubicon International deploys emergency medical teams with little targeted training on the health and illness patterns common to the geographic region and the type of disasters to which they respond, such as cholera, malaria, and malnutrition. These high-risk, low-incidence illnesses are infrequently seen in Western medical practices. Medical, nursing, and paramedical training programs address these illness patterns in the curriculum. Still, a lack of consistent exposure to the care and treatment of patients with these illnesses can lead to a lack of knowledge and confidence in delivering appropriate care.

Purpose: This quality improvement project aimed to determine if confidence in treating high-risk, low-incidence illness patterns improved after receiving a just-in-time training module. A 5-point Likert scale self-inventory was administered to measure humanitarian deployers’ confidence before and after the training.

Method: In this descriptive, quality improvement project, a modified version of a confidence assessment used by the University of Utah was used pre- and post- a just-in-time training intervention to measure whether there was an effect on the participants’ self-perceived confidence.

Intervention: Participants watched a just-in-time educational video on malnutrition developed by a multidisciplinary group of volunteer healthcare providers at Team Rubicon International. Participants completed a pre-and post-training confidence self-assessment, which explored their confidence in recognizing the signs and symptoms of malnutrition, recognizing if malnutrition is reportable to the WHO, educating the public about malnutrition, making treatment decisions for a patient with malnutrition, recognizing the role of WASH in the care of malnutrition patients, and recognizing the infection control needs of a patient with malnutrition.

Results: The confidence survey revealed statistically significant improvement in volunteer deployers’ confidence across all concepts, all roles, and clinicians and non-clinicians.

Conclusions: Overall, the findings suggest that just-in-time training is an educational intervention that can be a foundation or refresher for rapid-onset volunteer humanitarian and disaster responders. Participants’ increased confidence in caring for patients and communities affected by disasters and humanitarian crises underscores its potential role in shaping the future of volunteer humanitarian education.

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