Hospital-Wide Nurses' Training Program: Robert Reid Cabral Children's Hospital, Dominican Republic

In January 2012, the David Ortiz Children’s Fund, together with the faculty of Adelphi University’s School of Nursing and World Pediatric Project, launched a transformative hospital-wide nurses’ training program in the Dominican Republic’s largest pediatric referral hospital. The Dominican Republic is experiencing a dramatic shortage of professional nurses, and Robert Reid Children’s Hospital is particularly eager for this training because one third of its nursing staff lacks formal professional nursing training, having only a high school degree with a health focus or one year of health-related coursework following high school. The David Ortiz Children’s Fund has passionately committed to fully funding this far-reaching program.

This past month the program began with the unfolding of the first of ten training sessions, providing an intensive basic nursing skills 6-day course to the hospital’s top 25 nursing leadership staff. Between now and July 2012, the program will equip the hospital’s 385 nurses with this custom-designed course tailored to the staff’s current knowledge, the hospital’s resources, and its leadership’s vision.
Content areas emphasized in the classroom and then applied on the clinical units include: pediatric assessment of the patient; staff communication; the role of the nurse as advocate and teacher; and methods for improved infection control. The program boasts a uniquely tailored curriculum designed specifically for this hospital’s circumstances and needs.

This first of ten training sessions to train the nurses at this hospital was so very well received that already the Dominican nursing leadership has requested additional training to equip their nurse supervisors and clinical unit charge nurses with instruction and coaching on nursing management and leadership. In the words of the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit nurse manager, “We are hanging on your every word.”

This program benefits immensely from World Pediatric Project’s presence in St. Louis, Missouri, as the vast majority of the program’s teaching faculty are out of St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center. Rising to the great challenge of practicing excellent nursing care in a highly under-resourced facility, these talented nurses are developing a meaningful relationship with the nurses at Robert Reid. The program’s leadership is optimistic about the great impact this program will have on the 14,000+ children treated at this hospital every year. One of the nurses in the program commented, “It is so meaningful to us that one of our own, beloved baseball superstars, David Ortiz, made this happen for us and the children of the Dominican Republic”. The next training group heads to Robert Reid on February 18.