Piloting the WHO Basic Emergency Care Curriculum (H-44977)

Background: The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Basic Emergency Care (BEC) course is a new educational initiative for low and middle-income countries to provide non-specialty trained providers with a basic foundation in emergency triage, assessment, and stabilization. Pilot studies in sub-Saharan Africa have reported > 50% reduction in mortality following implementation. However, this course has not been tested in Latin America. Belize is a middle-income country of 375,000 inhabitants bridging both the Caribbean and Central America. Due to its size, it does not have a medical school or residency programs, and most providers are general practitioners that lack formal emergency medicine knowledge or skill sets. While emergency medicine has been developing in Belize through short courses on emergency medicine topics over the years, there has not been a national initiative to provide basic emergency care skills to the healthcare providers in the emergency and primary care settings.

Purpose: This study will employ established train-the-trainer methodologies to develop local training teams and assess educational effectiveness via traditional knowledge/skills assessments and national clinical outcomes

Project status: initial regional train-the-trainer has been completed and regional training teams focused on training in their regions, majority anticipated to be trained by January 2020. Data collection is in process, and triage implementation still in discussion with MOH.

Research Assoc Role: collect and analyze data, assist in supporting regional training teams.