Improving Nursing & Midwifery Care in Liberia 2025

Improving Nursing and Midwifery Education and Practices in Liberia through Professional Development Workshops

Introduction: 

Research shows that effective continuing professional development (CPD) helps improve the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of teaching faculty and clinicians thus positively impacting the learning outcomes and care of patients, respectively.

The main idea behind CPD in the context of health education and clinical practices is to support and maintain healthcare professionals’ competencies at the level sufficient enough so that they can provide quality and evidence-informed services. With the increasing roles for nurses, midwives, and other healthcare providers, nurses and midwives need to be trained to ensure that they are competent service providers (Micalle and Kayyal, 2019).

The main purpose of our initiative has been to enable nursing/midwifery faculty and practicing nurses and midwives to stay competitive, confident, and competent in performing their professional duties in the healthcare delivery system.

Challenges

            We conducted a needs assessment survey among accredited Liberian nursing/midwifery schools which showed the challenges faced by nursing/midwifery faculty in the areas of Setting Well Formatted Objectives for Students’ Learning Outcome, Evaluating Educational Programs, Familiarity with International Nursing/Midwifery Organizations. We also conducted a parallel online study followed by a needs assessment among nurses/midwives working in public and private hospitals/health centers across Liberia. An analysis of the data we collected from these needs assessment surveys and a review of the literature showed that postpartum hemorrhage, eclampsia and birth asphyxia are among the top leading causes of maternal-infants’ mortalities and morbidities in Liberia

Solution    

           With support from Friends of Liberia-US (FOL-US) and GlobalGiving through FOL-US, we conducted a three-day workshop for nursing/midwifery faculty and a three-day workshop for practicing nurses/midwives. We strongly believe that if nursing/midwifery faculty and practicing nurses/midwives are provided additional evidence-informed and context relevant CPD training, it will help in mitigating the identified current challenges in their respective discipline. On this basis we conducted the 2025 workshop using our usual format as follows:

Faculty CPD: January 6 &7, 2025

Joint Session (Faculty and clinicians): January 8, 2025

Practicing nurses/midwives CPD: January 9 & 10, 2025

            Twenty-two nursing/midwifery faculty and twenty-four practicing nurses/midwives from across Liberia attended their respective workshops. We invited two expert trainers from the Liberia Midwifery Association who presented on postpartum hemorrhage, eclampsia, and birth asphyxia. This year’s workshop was the first time we administered pre and post tests online to measure the level of participants' achievement and issued certificates of achievement. 

Long-Term Impact

            Our envisaged long-term impact is tailored with the topics we presented based on the analysis and inferences we gathered from the results of our needs assessment. Evidence shows that CPD promotes employee’s satisfaction and retention, patient’s satisfaction, and reduces patient’s stay in the hospital. It also improves students learning outcomes.

Specifically, the nursing/midwifery faculty will be competent in writing well formatted learning objectives. They will also be knowledgeable and competent in evaluating their own institutional programs. Additionally, practicing nurses/midwives will be effective in handling postpartum hemorrhage, eclampsia, and birth aphasias which are among the causes of maternal-infants’ morbidities and mortalities in Liberia. These topics were adequately addressed by midwifery experts during our 2025 workshop. The trigger down impact will be helping government in its efforts to reduce maternal-infants’ morbidities and mortalities in Liberia.

Improving Nursing and Midwifery Education and Practices in Liberia through Professional Development Workshop

Introduction

     The main idea behind continuing professional development (CPD) in the context of health education and clinical practices is to support and maintain healthcare professionals’ competencies at the level sufficient to enable them to provide quality and evidence-informed services. With the increasing complexities roles for nurses, midwives, and other healthcare providers, nurses and midwives need to be trained to ensure that they are competent service providers (Micalle & Kayyal, 2019). As we prepare for the 2025 CPD, we feel it compelling to list the specific activities that we will do in order to fulfill the results of the needs assessment.  

Challenges

     In low-income countries, like Liberia, conducting continuing faculty development workshop has a lot of obstacles. Prominent among these are lack of resources, lack of time, and limited access. In Liberia, for example, the majority of nursing and midwifery training institutions have limited resources to conduct CPD workshops regularly. Maternal-infant mortality issues are among the major health challenges in the country.

Solution         

     Over the past five years, a team of Liberia Healthcare Professionals (Friends of Liberia-Liberia Health Team) with supports from Friends of Liberia-US, GlobalGiving, and Global Health Ministries has continued to conduct annual CPD workshops for nursing/midwifery faculty and practicing nurses and midwives. Currently, we are conducting needs assessment to guide us in developing a curriculum that is responsive, evidence-informed, and content relevant for our 2025 faculty and clinicians’ workshops. The 2025 CPD in addition to addressing results from the needs assessment will take into account measures to help government in mitigating the high maternal-infant mortalities in the country. Our strategy in this regard will be to have a joint session that will include faculty and practicing nursing/midwives.

Long term Impact

     Like previous workshops, participants will be provided workshop learning resources and encouraged to share these resources with their colleagues in their respective institutions through workshops.  Continuing Professional Development can enhance, maintain, and up-date the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of nursing/midwifery faculty and practicing nurses and midwives. In Liberia, where resources are very limited and nursing/midwifery schools and hospitals do not conduct regular CPD training. Our yearly in-service workshops, which have impacted over 100 nursing/midwifery faculty and over 90 practicing nurses/midwives since 2020, will augment the Liberian Government’s efforts in improving the healthcare delivery system of the country.

Your donations will help us to carry on and improve offering these important workshops. Thank you for your continued support!