New courses have been added to IHSE’s list of postgraduate studies offered through GPHC
In the middle of the pandemic…
Director of IHSE, Dr. Alexandra Harvey.
IHSE postgraduate medical students during a training session at the facility.
Kaieteur News – The Institute of Health Science Education (IHSE) at Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) has added two new postgraduate courses despite facing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Medical professionals can now take advantage of the Masters of Ear and Throat Medicine (ENT) and the Neonatal Nursing Bsc. programs offered through the IHSE.
The programs are in addition to some 13 other postgraduate courses available to doctors and nurses seeking to formally develop their qualifications.
GPHC Director of Medical Education and Head of IHSE, Dr. Alexandra Harvey, told Kaieteur News, although some classes were disturbed by the pandemic in how they are run, there were no major changes to the school’s annual work program. Dr. noted that Harvey said that the IHSE had planned to deliver the courses even before the institution faced the challenges of the pandemic.
“We had planned to add the courses earlier in the year but once COVID-19 came we had to find out how to manage the existing courses we were running before we introduced the new ones,” he explained .
According to Dr. Harvey, the new courses will help boost the IHSE’s current capacity to train medical staff.
“Now, we have the Ear and Throat faculty that will basically deal with diseases that affect those areas such as tonsilitis; a component of that course will also be surgical and for the nurses we now have the Bachelor of Science program in neonatal nursing, ”said the Head of IHSE.
In addition to the two courses, Dr. Harvey told this newspaper that the institute also offers courses in Anesthesia and Intensive Care (Diploma), Anesthesia and Intensive Care (MMED), General Surgery (MMED), Orthopedics and Traumatology (Diploma), Orthopedics and Traumatology (MMED), Emergency Medicine (MMED), Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases (MMED), MMED Family Medicine, MMED Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics (MMED), Psychiatry (MMED), Diagnostic Radiology (MMED) and the Diploma program in Nursing Anesthesia.
However, the IHSE Director explained that due to the pandemic many of the classes had moved to an online platform.
“We did a lot of virtual classes by zoom and whenever in-house training is needed, this is done under strict COVID-19 protocols,” he said.
As a result, Dr. Harvey reported that 76 medical professionals successfully completed postgraduate programs offered by the institute despite the pandemic conditions.
The successful postgraduate trainees in the class of 2020 included approximately 44 doctors and 32 nurses who completed their programs, despite the pandemic.
Dr. noted that Harvey batch 2020 postgraduate candidates for their dedication.
According to her, “the team worked hard, perhaps even harder than most years to ensure they successfully completed the program of work.”
He also told Kaieteur News, that a new batch of postgraduate medical students has already started to sign up for a host of specialized health education programs for the year 2021.
Given its mandate, the IHSE has been called for introducing a next-level form of medical education at Guyana’s national health institute. The institution since 2006 has been working closely with the University of Guyana (AS) to provide medical accreditation for the various programs for doctors and nurses to complete studies there.
Annually, the institute, located in the GPHC compound, prides itself on providing scores of doctors and nurses with a specialized line of postgraduate medical certificates.