Resident Physician Nemours Children's Hospital Greenville, Delaware, United States
Background: Adult primary care providers in Tanzania are often tasked with managing acute and chronic illness in children despite receiving minimal to no dedicated pediatric training. Furthermore, as a nation of over 60 million people, Tanzania has a severe shortage of specialty-trained physicians. Within the field of neurology alone, an estimated 30 adult and pediatric neurologists are practicing throughout Tanzania despite the country’s relatively high burden of neurological disease. While global health initiatives focusing on general medicine are widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa, subspecialty training and transitional care initiatives are limited. Objective: Our goal is to provide pediatric subspecialty education to adult physicians and trainees in Tanzania; this intervention addresses gaps in neurology education among adult providers who treat children and adolescents in order to improve the quality of neurology-focused care and ensure the best chance of positive clinical outcomes for patients across the lifespan. Design/Methods: Mwananyamala Hospital in Tanzania currently partners with Christiana Hospital in Delaware for a monthly virtual discussion series between internal medicine resident trainees at both sites. We are modifying the curriculum to address topics including epilepsy, cerebral palsy, neuroinfectious disease, stroke response, and transitional care into adulthood. Emphasis will be placed on reviewing clinical presentations of disease and using the neurologic examination to make diagnoses and guide therapy rather than relying on expensive or otherwise inaccessible diagnostic tools. After IRB approval is obtained, an attendee pre- and post-participation survey will help assess the impact of the lecture series in terms of familiarity and subjective competence in managing neurologic disease processes in the pediatric population using Likert-style questions. Data will be analyzed in Excel and SPSS prior to April 2024.
