Lalitpur, August 14:

The government should develop a strategy to address pre-service and in-service training programmes to enhance the quality of mid-level health workers, a report prepared by the National Health Training Centre and Nick Simons Institute (NSI) has said.

The report, released here today, is a compiled form of clinical skill assessment of 163 government mid-level health workers that included 109 auxiliary health workers (AHWs), 31 senior AHWs and 23 health assistants (HA) in four districts — Gorkha, Bardia, Dadeldhura and Rasuwa.

With a minimum acceptable score being 60 per cent, the study has found significant performance gap in all categories other than the paediatric medicine and procedures. Among the six domains assessed in the study, the participants scored 28 per cent in adult medicine, 56 per cent in paediatrics, 35 per cent in maternity care, 45 per cent in orthopedics, 59 per cent in procedures and 46 per cent in management.

The average age of the respondents was 36.1 years and had an average of 12.8 years of experience. Of the total, 58.8 per cent health workers received government schooling, while 41.3 per cent were products of private institutes.

The health workers conducted deliveries, but only 42.9 per cent were found to have received formal pre-service trainings in the related field, the report said.

It added that the performance gap in clinical skills must be addressed through a mid-level clinical skills practicum to improve the quality of health workers.

According to the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training, there are 125 mid-level training institutes in Nepal, of which 117 are affiliated to the CTEVT.