This is a critical care and emergency medicine conference committed to developing Critical Care and Emergency Medicine Care Infrastructure in Tanzania. Now in it’s third year, the focus of the conference is to truly build on the infrastructure of Emergency Care in Tanzania and the region.
The Afri(Crit) course is a combination of didactics as well as hand-on work-shops to build skills in Critical Care and Emergency Medicine and lay the foundation for further growth of the fields. The course will take place at Muhimbili Hospital in Dar es Salaam, which is the only public Emergency Department in Tanzania. The goal is to continue to train the leaders in Emergency and Critical Care Medicine to allow local stakeholders to lead similar courses it the future.
The trip is a combination of a curriculum through the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Fundamental Critical Care Support (FCCS) Course, as well as a second course that is a hybrid of didactics and workshops.
At the conclusion of this trip, Tanzania will become the second Sub-Saharan country in Africa to be able to teach FCCS independently.
This is meant to genuinely build on the early stages of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine in Tanzania. Participants will be both those with emergency and critical experiences as well as generalists with less baseline experience. Course work will be completed online prior to the conference and lectures and hands on stations will consist of time for discussion as well as small group learning to build on essential skills.
The course will be provided to approximately 60 medical professionals from Dar es Salaam and the surrounding hospitals. The two courses offered will allow us to target physicians with variable levels of experiences in emergency and critical care medicine. Through small group sessions and short lectures, we hope to provide both basic skills as well as provide the tools for those with experience to teach the course independently moving forward.
As emergency and critical care medicine develop in more resource limited settings, courses such as this expect to have a dramatic impact. Muhimbili Hospital, and Tanzania in general, is in a crucial stage of development of emergency and critical care medicine where we hope to truly have an impact in further developing the skills needed to provide emergency and critical care medicine in a safe and effective way.
While this course is a one-week experience between lectures and workshops, the expected impact and goal is to provide the skills to far out live our course. At the completion of this trip, Tanzanian physicians will be the second in Sub-Saharan Africa with the credentials to teach the FCCS Course independently.
Moving forward, there will be ongoing monthly online webinars, case conferences and further teaching partnership in Dar es Salaam and surrounding community. There has already been interest expressed in a future course in Pediatric Emergency and Critical Care Course.
The goal and impact is expected to go far beyond our trip.
Thank you so much to the Dox Foundation for making this incredibly worthwhile work possible for me. Through the support of the Dox Foundation, I was able to teach and participate in a course that is now in its third year supporting the development of critical care and emergency medicine in Tanzania. I worked with a multidisciplinary group teaching a 4-day course that blended lectures and hands on practical workshops teaching health professionals from throughout Tanzania as they continue to develop the field of critical care medicine. Working with Tanzanian colleagues, at the completion of this course, Tanzania is now the second country in Sub-Saharan Africa that is accredited to teach the Fundamental Critical Care Support Course, a course designed to prepare non intensivists to practice critical care medicine.
This work will continue to support the developing field of critical care medicine throughout Tanzania and I truly appreciate the support of the Dox Foundation making this possible for me.
