Director of the Institute of Health Science Education (IHSE), Dr. Madan Rambaran recently spoke about the accomplishments of the local residency post-graduate education in the last seven years in Guyana.
Apart from enabling young medical doctors’ access to post-graduate education, thereby creating a core of highly trained professionals, the ultimate goal of these programmes is to improve the quality of care delivered to the patients, a release from the Government Information Agency (GINA) said.
In 2006, the first medical post-graduate programme in surgery was launched in Guyana; when many people were skeptical of this approach as they were of the view that Guyana was not ready for such a step.
According to GINA, Dr. Rambaran and other pioneers in the medical field including Dean of the University of Guyana’s Faculty of Health Science, Dr. Emmanuel Cummings, continued to press forward to develop a model for post-graduate education. The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) has partnered with several renowned international medical institutions to successfully deliver these post-graduate programmes.
The surgery programme was successfully implemented and 15 doctors graduated in surgery and orthopedics. These doctors now form a major part of Guyana’s surgical care and resources. They have been attending to the surgical needs of patients at the New Amsterdam, Linden, and Suddie Hospitals.
There are also programmes in emergency medicine being done in collaboration with Vanderbilt University, as well as a programme in paediatrics which is being done with support from ‘Guyana Help the Kids’, a Canadian Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) whose goal is to decrease neonatal and infant mortality in developing countries, especially Guyana.
Only recently, the IHSE partnered with the University of Maryland under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which saw seven doctors enrolled in the Masters in Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease Residency Programme.
GINA said that during the course of this week, the vice-president of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynaecology is expected to arrive in Guyana to administer the in-service residency examination to local resident doctors. This examination is undertaken by all resident doctors in the United States (US).
Dr Rambaran said that Guyana is the second country in the world, outside of the US, where this exam is administered. This programme in obstetrics and gynaecology commenced last year in collaboration with the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
GINA quoted Dr. Rambaran as positing, “We have put in place these programmes and we have a lot of evidence that demonstrates that they have improved a number of things within our own environment.”
He added that even the undergraduate programme has seen tremendous spin-off benefits from the residency programmes.
