Evaluating the effectiveness of life skills development training among Sri Lankan Public Health Midwives

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Training of Public Health Midwives (PHM), the grass root level primary healthcare workers, on life skills development (LSD) is vital in order to deliver the best possible healthcare services to the community. Published literature on the topic in Sri Lanka are limited. OBJECTIVES: To identify improvement in life skills (LS) application of PHM following a LSD training program. METHODS: LSD training is a five-day activity based training program for healthcare workers, conducted by Education, Training & Research Unit, Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka. The existing training module , containing ten core LS (self- awareness, empathy, effective communication, good interpersonal relationships, coping with stress, coping with emotions, analytical thinking, creative thinking, decision making and problem solving) was used by a team of Medical Officers who were trained as master trainers. An Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) was conducted before and after the training to ascertain the pre and post training LS application on family planning counselling, antenatal care and pre-pregnancy care among 61 PHMs in three selected Medical Officer of Health (MOH) areas. Evaluation was done according to a global rating scale. RESULTS: The difference between the average scores obtained at pre and post OSCE was significantly higher (P<0.001), indicating an improvement on application of LS. Improvement among PHMs with shorter work experience was greater than PHMs with longer work experience (correlation coefficients P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The outcome of the training program decreases with advancing service, several adjustments are needed to make the program suitable even for senior midwives.