Saturday, January 23, 2016

Third Annual Ilula Minnesota International Healthcare Conference

Thursday and Friday were devoted to presenting our third annual Ilula Minnesota International HealthCare Conference.  Starting in 2014, Shoulder to Shoulder has presented the annual conference for our colleagues in Tanzania.  All our presenters did a great job and all the healthcare professional teams that attended gave positive feedback and will return to their hospitals with quality improvement plans to implement based on what they learned.

Our first course was presented in January 2014 with 30 attendees.  Based on extremely positive feedback from the initial conference, our partners in Tanzania encouraged us to significantly expand the conference to offer this educational experience to a much larger audience of caregivers.  As a result, we expanded the 2015 conference to include all 28 Southern Zone Lutheran Hospitals and hosted 100 professionals.   From each hospital we invite one doctor, one nurse and one pharmacist.  This year we are also partnering with Global Health Administration Partners to provide education to Hospital Administrators at each hospital.

Our conference is based on 5 principles:

1. Lifelong Learning.  We believe all professionals should contribute to a culture of learning and continuously learn to improve our practice.  We include students and residents in preparation and presentation of the conference.
 2. Interprofessional teamwork.  We include nursing, pharmacy, administrators, and physicians in both the attendance and presentations.  We emphasize teamwork throughout the conference.  We each bring unique knowledge and skills to share; specifically Tanzanian presenters emphasize tropical medicine and HIV, American presenters emphasize the growing global problem of chronic and non-communicable diseases.
3. Mutual Respect.  We emphasize the ability for all our participants to teach and learn from each other, in spite of our differences in practice setting, culture, and socioeconomic situation.  We include local leaders in planning the conference and select topics based on feedback from participants.  Presentations are delivered by both US and Tanzanian professionals.  We adhere to the highest international standards in the preparation of the educational content and accreditation of the program.  The program is based on a foundation of a longstanding and ongoing relationship.
4. Continuous improvement.  Learning should drive improvement in practice.  We include planning sessions for participants to complete planning documents based on learnings to institute improvement plans upon returning to home hospitals.
5. Sustainable Impact.  We believe that education and improvement are some of the most valuable ways to promote a sustainable positive impact on the health of our partners’ communities.

Our conference is accredited by the Education Department at the HealthEast Care System to provide participants with CME credits for participation in this program, and the University of Minnesota International Medical Education and Research Program.

Funding for the course is provided through generous contributions from several foundations and individuals.  All funds raised go entirely to hosting the conference, and support for local Tanzanian staff to attend, including meals, travel and lodging expenses.  We want to thank all our donors including Global Health Ministries, The Peter King Family Foundation, Dale and Patty Anderson, Arlene and Dave Tourville, and others.

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