Project News

The 50th Fiji National Nursing Forum was organized by the Ministry of Health on the third and fourth of November 2011. The Minister of Health officially opened the forum. Participants were about 60 people; representatives of nursing supervisors from divisional and sub-divisional levels, community health nurses, and clinical. In the forum, the project introduced the concept of the Need-Based In-Service Training (NB-IST) and gave a presentation on results of IST evaluation in Central and Eastern divisions in 2010 and 2011.

The evaluation was conducted in October 2011 according to five criteria; effectiveness, efficiency, equity, impact, and sustainability. The number of conducted "In-House Training (facility based group leaning session)" drastically increased in 2011 in comparison with 2010. However, the number of conducted "NB-IST" decreased in all sub-divisions. The average number of NB-IST attended per nurse also decreased by half. Participants discussed the problems, causes of problems, possible solutions, and recommendations. The main recommendations are listed below:

1. Strengthen Sub-divisional health sisters (SDHS) as an organizer of IST
2. Evaluate In-House Training in order to enhance the efficiency of IST
3. Discuss the implementation strategies of IST/NB-IST in Eastern Division
4. Conduct a small scale survey on the application of what nurses have learnt to their work