Fangqi Guo: Project Lead with two newborns in Nan Jian County
As of the new year, we have concluded our Newborn Training project. The following is a brief overview of what we have done.
The purpose of the Newborn Training Program is to understand if training of pulse oximetry and auscultation is an effective method for CCHD early detection. Hospitals in rural china have virtually no knowledge of these screening methods.
So in 2015, ChinaCal collaborated with Yunnan first affiliated hospital and designed a training program to educate rural obstetric personnel on this screening method. The target population included doctors and nurses working at Yunnan county hospitals, where majority of births occur. Training team includes cardiac specialist in Kunming, a student, and previous research assistant. Volunteers from all over the world (Amelia’s students from Harbin). Training provided is on-site. Teams travelled to each of county hospitals and conducted training in classrooms. Before training started in each of the hospitals, we donated a pulse oximeter (donated through our partnership with Massimo corporation). Training consisted of 3 parts: 30 min of lecture, training on pulse oximetry, and stethoscope practice training.
Since then, the program has run for 2.5 years. We have visited 105 hospitals in total (there are approximately 125 in Yunnan province). We have covered 14/16 prefectures in Yunnan. On average, total trained staff include 20-25 doctors and obstetric nurses at each hospital. This amounts to ~2000 to 3000 staff. “Knowledge tests” were given before and after training to measure the effectiveness of sessions. Post-training, additional observation was made to ensure that staff were using skills learned correctly. As a result more than 50,000 newborns' hearts have been properly examined and those with abnormal results have undergone cardiac ultrasound and those with heart disease referred for treatment.
We would like to thank you for your persistent support over the past 2.5 years. We could not have done this without you. A study is currently being written by a PhD student at UC Irvine, and a link to that paper will be published shortly.
Happy Chinese New Year!