Cherinet Osebo*, Jeremy Grushka, Dan Deckelbaum, Tarek Razek
Background: Injury-related mortality and morbidity contribute significantly to public health concerns. Insufficient resources, infrastructure and workforces, infancy trauma care system, and training programs in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) extended the injury burden, resulting in increased deaths. In such cases, the proposed solution is to provide a resource-friendly, highly impactful training approach. The Primary Trauma Care (PTC) course was developed to provide a reasonable replacement for local resources, given that Advanced Trauma Life Support training (ATLS) is unaffordable in resource-limited regions. This study focused on evaluating the PTC training impacts on SSA clinicians. Materials and Methods: We reviewed the literature by searching MEDLINE (Ovid interface), Embase (Ovid interface), and African journals online databases to identify relevant peer-reviewed articles. Studies were included if the topic focused on PTC training in SSA and addressed the impacts of training on injury management assessed participants and patients’ outcome measures, and trainees were hospital-based healthcare practitioners. Results: All training was held entirely in SSA’s settings. The bulk of studies reported on nurses and clinical officers (58.9%), followed by physicians (35.5%) and medical students (5.6%). Three studies were identified as Kirkpatrick level 2 evidence, and one reflected level 4. All four studies found that taking a PTC course improved knowledge of injury management (p<0.05). Except for a single study that represented a reduction in trainees' confidence (p<0.03), the rest three demonstrated improvements in confidence and skill attainment (p<0.05). One study discovered lowering traumatic mortality rates after a PTC course (p<0.01). Conclusion: Following the PTC training, clinicians experienced significant advancements in knowledge in managing critical trauma patients and noted departmental infrastructure enhancements. We fully appraise the PTC training program as a first-class course for SSA with follow-up refresher sessions to ensure sustainability and improve trauma care. Further, a comprehensive institutions-based study is recommended to understand the training’s impact on patient outcomes.
Published Date: 2025-01-20; Received Date: 2024-01-22
