Rwanda Interprofessional Education

The Club’s Zoom meeting was addressed by Rotarian Andrew Blaikie, Senior Lecturer in Global Health at the University of St Andrews, who spoke about a collaboration with the University of Rwanda to provide healthcare education in that country using the Arclight device.

Arclight is a tool for diagnosing eye disease that is especially suitable for use in developing countries because it is inexpensive, pocket sized and easy to operate. The St Andrews Rotary Club has been raising funds to make the device more widely available in Africa, so it was interesting for members to hear about its use in Interprofessional Education. IPE, for short, is an educational approach that deliberately trains students from different healthcare disciplines together. In this case there were nurses, ophthalmologists and medical students. They tend to come from different socio-economic backgrounds and one of the great benefits of IPE is that it facilitates stronger, more cohesive team-working by cutting across hierarchies.

Evaluation of the pilot study demonstrated not only that the 178 participants had learned how to use the Arclight and improved their diagnostic ability, they were also more confident, especially the nurses.

All participants were given an Arclight for use in their future work, part of the twelve thousand Arclight devices which have now been placed in circulation in Africa, with a further ten thousand targeted to be supplied.

The vote of thanks for a fascinating and highly informative presentation, on a project that will help prevent blindness in Rwanda and many other countries, was given by Rotarian Daphne Grant.