"Nursing for Welbodi": Building nursing care in Sierra Leone

Over the course of the project, KGHP deployed three nurses from the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to work alongside Sierra Leonean nurses at Connaught Hospital and with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, providing hands-on training and mentoring.

With funding from the Burdett Trust and King’s College Hospital Nurses’ League, KGHP and the nursing leadership at Connaught Hospital worked together to develop a nursing education team, embedding continual professional development (CPD) and a culture of learning into the daily lives of nurses.

Following direct training courses delivered to over 100 nurses in clinical skills and leadership, the nursing education team identified 16 facilitators who were mentored and coached to become nurse educators themselves, as well as lead the nurses' morning briefing sessions, where they discuss critical cases and the management of patients.

After renovating the nurses’ education space at Connaught Hospital, we held a Nursing Education Launch event to share the vision of nursing education and celebrate the work done at the hospital to support nurses’ CPD, and to launch the new morning briefing model.

KGHP has also played a key role in the development of the country's national nursing education strategy. We regularly chair the Nurse Education NGO Forum in Sierra Leone, which connects the Ministry of Health's agenda with NGOs working in nursing education. At the request of the Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer from the Ministry of Health, the NGO forum has set up a Working Group of NGOs supporting both midwifery and nursing CPD, in order to review the national CPD framework. This review will influence the development of the country's national nursing agenda and education frameworks.