After a fraught series of flights and lost luggage, we three ZTA trainers (Lesley Hill, Joanna Pearce and Simon Willoughby-Booth) have arrived in Zambia to run two training courses at University Teaching Hospital Department of Psychiatry (UTH) and at Chainama Psychiatric Hospital between 10th January and 21st February 2017. We spent the first 4 days going over the teaching materials and course documents to refine and update the course content.
We have had meetings with key staff at UTH, Chainama and the Chainama College of Health Sciences. There will be 20 trainees at UTH, a mix of neuropsychology and mental health nursing students and we have 3 potential people starting the next stage of the course to become trainers themselves. At Chainama the course will also have 20 trainees drawn from nursing, medical, clinical officers, psychologists and ward assistants. At Chainama we hope that we will have potential trainers able to start second stage training later in the year. Our aim is that we will be able, over time, to train sufficient local trainers in Zambia for the Therapeutic Art training to become self-sufficient and no longer dependent on outside trainers.
We are staying at Gossner Mission in Lusaka again and it is an ideal base for both planning and relaxing during the training. Lesley and Joanna are experienced Zambian hands but this is Simon’s first time here (so they are having to hold his hand a lot of the time). For a first time visitor, Zambia is confusing, noisy and pretty hard to understand, superficially very like many parts of the European experience but at the same time, so totally different. Having said that, our contacts in health services here have been preparing for the work to begin and are really enthusiastic about its impact it has already had for staff and patients. Our first training session starts tomorrow.......
We have had meetings with key staff at UTH, Chainama and the Chainama College of Health Sciences. There will be 20 trainees at UTH, a mix of neuropsychology and mental health nursing students and we have 3 potential people starting the next stage of the course to become trainers themselves. At Chainama the course will also have 20 trainees drawn from nursing, medical, clinical officers, psychologists and ward assistants. At Chainama we hope that we will have potential trainers able to start second stage training later in the year. Our aim is that we will be able, over time, to train sufficient local trainers in Zambia for the Therapeutic Art training to become self-sufficient and no longer dependent on outside trainers.
We are staying at Gossner Mission in Lusaka again and it is an ideal base for both planning and relaxing during the training. Lesley and Joanna are experienced Zambian hands but this is Simon’s first time here (so they are having to hold his hand a lot of the time). For a first time visitor, Zambia is confusing, noisy and pretty hard to understand, superficially very like many parts of the European experience but at the same time, so totally different. Having said that, our contacts in health services here have been preparing for the work to begin and are really enthusiastic about its impact it has already had for staff and patients. Our first training session starts tomorrow.......
Mwaiseni ku Zambia Simon... welcome and so impressed with your progress :-) :-)
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