The evolution of our train the trainer course: how a personal experience changed the way I perceived global health

Every morning of every session I wake up wondering, “are we providing a real benefit?” I always hope the answer is yes but only time and commitment will tell. The general ultrasound teaching sessions are comprehensive and packed in a short period of time, covering lung ultrasound to help diagnose a collapsed lung, pneumonia or heart failure, cardiac ultrasound to help differentiate types of shock, deep vein ultrasound to help diagnose clots and the abdominal exam to help identify blood in the abdomen after trauma. The mastery of these skills takes time and practice and we recognize that a one or two-day course is not sufficient, so how do we sustain the medical education delivered here today? 

I’ll tell you a story to answer that question. There was a great man by the name of Mr. Zahin Ahmed. He was the heart and soul of an NGO called Friends in Village Development Bangladesh (FIVDB), he also was a very close family member. 

In 2009 I came to Bangladesh as a medical student and I visited his office in Sylhet and he took me out to a village to show me what he was working on. I don’t think I truly understood the impact that visit would have until now; he took me to a village and had me sit in on a community meeting and see the various programming in adult literacy and other such capacity building endeavors. He helped me to see that by providing a structured basis for education you could literally change lives as his interventions helped the poorest of the poor build skills to allow them to then provide for their family, and allowed communities to practice safe birthing techniques which was and still is, revolutionary. 

Fast forward, nearly ten years later, that experience still resonates with me, maybe even more so now than ever. As I started to develop my passion for Global medicine I wanted very much to create a manner in which we could make a lasting impact; that led me to medical education, a career in academics and pursuing medical training as my pathway into Global Health. So, that is the long winded explanation of how we have arrived to the “train the trainer” course!

For two days we are conducting a small group session with JUST hands-on training, scanning as many patients as we can. While everyone received hands-on training during the course this more intimate teaching environment allows for fine tuning as well as teaching how to troubleshoot and how to teach others. The purpose of this course is to build the capacity of these pre-identifies leaders in ultrasound so they can then take the responsibility to teach others long after we have left. Through the wonderful World Wide Web we then have several ways to share cases and imaging to allow expert feed back in as close to “real-time” as possible. 

While I have tried this in an informal way in the past, this year I wanted to proceed more formally,  hopeful that the inauguration of this course will lead to more widespread use of the ultrasound and a sustainable impact.