Ahead of World Stroke Day last month, Clare Gordon, Consultant Nurse with Lancashire Teaching Hospitals and Senior Research Fellow at UCLan, spent time helping support specialist stroke developments in Ghana.
Clare enjoyed a fortnight in Africa, working with Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Tamale Teaching Hospital and Ho Teaching Hospital in Ghana to support stroke care development and develop online training modules.
She volunteers as part of Wessex Global Stroke Partnerships, founded 15 years ago, and predominately funded through Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET) Health Partnership Scheme, with grants contributing to further projects in similarly low-income countries such as Gambia and Zambia.
Clare enjoys passing on her know-how and experience and explained: “It’s probably my favourite thing to do, it’s so rewarding. It’s about the real fundamentals of stroke care we started with here 20 years ago, which saves patients’ lives.
“It doesn’t require many extra resources to make these changes, which is also why it’s been so successful – checking a patient can swallow safely before they start to eat or drink – if you don’t, it can go down into their lungs and cause them to die; in Ghana they are seeing big changes in the number of patients that are surviving, just by being able to assess that properly.
“How to position people in a way which helps them recover after a stroke but also prevents pressure ulcers – before our Partnership, most patients were nursed flat in bed with no opportunity to sit out in a chair. These are core things that can make a big difference.”
Clare initially visited Ghana as a student nurse during an overseas project in her summer holiday. She said: “I had been to Ghana with one of my student nurse friends, and when I was working at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, I heard of this Stroke Partnership starting after a consultant had also worked in Ghana and made connections with consultants over there. Naturally, with my previous experience of nursing in Ghana, I wanted to join the team.
“We got our first grant through the British Medical Association, to visit Korle-Bu Hospital and understand what they needed and how we could help, then we started applying for grants through THET, funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
“We’ve had several grants from them since. We’re in our 15th year, and the Partnership team in UK and Africa are like my second work colleagues. We stay in touch and hear what each other are doing through our lively team WhatsApp group! They were sharing fabulous stroke-awareness initiatives for World Stroke Day.”
The work in Ghana has reached a point where the more experienced Ghanaian members are able to pass on their knowledge, and the UK team can explore other territories: “I’ve been out to Ghana five times, working with the staff there to develop and grow their skills, and you can see a real difference over 15 years - staff nurses from when we first went out there are now matrons and directors of nursing, and there is real kudos from being part of the stroke project.
“This time when we went out for education and training, we did joint visits with the Korle-Bu Hospital stroke team to train other hospitals in the country. The Korle-Bu Team are really confident about sharing their knowledge and skills now, so we can take a step back.
“Now are also supporting Gambia and Zambia, and we are always looking for new partnerships. If we can get a grant together, we can offer to support them.
“We’ve held joint webinars on stroke care in low-income nations, with the World Stroke Organisation, with attendees from all over the world, which was amazing. Core Stroke Skills in a Resource-Poor Setting | World Stroke Organization
“Each project has a focus, aims and objectives to achieve, and the last one was not only to supporting stroke care development, we were asking them to evaluate some online training modules to check they were relevant for international healthcare professionals. Using ‘think aloud’ interviews they worked through the modules and told us what they thought, what was confusing, and what needed to change so it was more relevant. Once finalised, they will be freely available for anyone across the world to access.
“The NHS encourages staff to volunteer overseas it can provide real benefits to staff and develop skills that can be used to improve NHS patient care.” Improving care by volunteering abroad | NHS England | Workforce, training and education
