HIV

Nursing: HIV Teaching Plan

Nursing: HIV Teaching Plan

Introduction

Health care workers need proper training and education to provide care to people infected with HIV as well as to those affected by HIV. In Tanzania, nurses constitute 60% of the professional health care workforce (Ministry of Health [MOH], 2002) and provide primary care services to most of the country's population, which includes more than 2 million people living with HIV or AIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS [UNAIDS], 2006).

Although there are opportunities for in-service trainings, a gap currently exists in preservice HIV education that has been acknowledged by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. To date, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Mozambique (Renggli et al., 2008) and Haiti (Knebel, Puttkammer, Demes, Devrois, & Prismy, 2008) have examples of preservice education initiatives but not to the same magnitude that the Tanzania HIV/ AIDS Nursing Education (THANE) project has developed.

The THANE project was conceptualized to increase the educational capacity of Tanzanian nursing schools in HIV by strengthening the knowledge and skills of the nurse educators. THANE uses a train-the-trainer format, while combining didactic and clinical components with a focus on community-based family-centered care. The purpose of this article is to describe the THANE project and its unique contribution to HIV preservice nursing education. This article takes you through the THANE process from development of the curriculum to implementation. The challenges of the project and the way forward are also addressed.

Development of THANE

In 2004, the School of Nursing at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) and Dr. Jeannie Reisler of the University of Michigan conducted a survey, funded by the World AIDS Foundation, of 300 nurses and midwives in Tanzania to assess knowledge and attitudes about HIV prevention, treatment, and care. The unpublished results showed that nurse educators wanted to improve their knowledge and teaching skills related to HIV care but that they were often left out of national HIV in-service trainings.

To develop a greater understanding of this situation, a workshop for nurse educators from 26 Tanzanian nursing schools was held to review the survey results. The outcome of this meeting was the conceptualization of the THANE project. In May 2005, the University of Michigan and MUHAS were awarded funds from the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) for a twinning partnership to develop and train nurse educators on HIV prevention, treatment, and care. AIHA is a U.S. nonprofit organization working to advance global health by helping communities and nations with limited resources build sustainable institutional and human resource capacity. The HIV/ AIDS Twinning Center was launched in late 2004 after it was awarded to AIHA as a cooperative agreement through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

Soon after the project began Dr. Reisler passed away, and the School of Nursing at MUHAS sought a new collaborator. In October 2006, the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) was invited to become MUHAS' new twinning ...