2024 Conference Summary
The 2024 Africa Partners Medical (APM) Young Doctors and Nurses conference was a huge success! This would not have been possible without the amazing generosity of all who support the mission of Africa Partners Medical.
The dates of the conference were September 15th – 17th at Coconut Grove Beach Hotel in Elmina, Ghana. This was the 7th Partnering for Life training conference (inclusive of the virtual sessions during the pandemic). The purpose of these continuing medical education (CME) conference that target physicians, nurses, and some allied health professionals who are early in their careers is to provide high quality CME that can form the foundation for a long career of service to others and to share the core values of Africa Partners Medical in order to make generational changes. All attendees learn life-saving skills including hands on training in basic life support (BLS), newborn resuscitation, and how to manage common obstetrical emergencies. Point of care ultrasound (POCUS) training has become very popular and a mainstay of our conferences in recent years. Communication skills including shared decision making, doctor/nurse communication, doctor/patient communication, nurse/patient communication, and developing highly-effective teams are core topics for the conference and are covered through lecture and breakout workshops. Each conference also has a new theme with guest faculty providing important updates. Some of the most popular sessions this year included a presentation by Dr. Amelia Laing on the importance of paying attention to details when caring for patients and Dr. Felix Kohol’s overview of establishing and running a mission hospital.
This was the largest group of faculty and attendees to date. Twenty-nine volunteer faculty members from the U.S. and West Africa collaborated to put on the conference. Included in the faculty were seven Young Physicians some of whom were actually alumni of previous conferences. Partnerships and long-term relationships are core values and the mix/make-up of the faculty help reinforce these values with many experienced faculty returning, several first timers, twenty traveling from the U.S., nine from Ghana, and a mixture of physician and allied health professionals.
The attendee groups include first time physicians (39), alumni physicians (20), first time nurses (30), alumni nurses (15), first time midwives (6), other first time allied health professionals (4), and alumni allied health (1). These attendees spent time all together during the large group (plenary) sessions each of the first two mornings followed by breakout sessions focusing on the needs of each group. The afternoons and evenings consisted of workshops and hand-on training sessions with the final day culminating in a large-group meeting focusing on lessons learned and commitments to change. The opportunity to interact with others during the mealtimes and the final evening banquet/cultural event is a highlight for both faculty and attendees and this offers time for one-on-one conversations and creating meaningful connections.
The attendees expressed their sincere gratitude for the generosity of the donors who make this conference possible. Approximately 95% of the costs associated with the conference are covered by donors with only a nominal charge to attendees.
During the lessons learned and commitment to change session attendees shared key lessons learned and their goals for making changes in their own practices and at their institutions. Some of the most impactful testimonials came from alumni who shared about how their previous experiences have been implemented including opportunities to share with others what they had learned (spreading the reach of the APM conference beyond direct attendees), ways they are treating patients differently (taking more time, using shared decisions making skills, increased empathy for the suffering of others, saving lives through CPR and newborn resuscitation, and engaging in research or quality improvement projects to make impactful changes locally).
After the conference concluded some faculty traveled to Kumasi for additional training related to Emergency Medicine/Pediatric Emergency Medicine as well as training nurses on the management of lymphedema and setting up a regional center of excellence.
Our planning group has already met to review the conference feedback from faculty and attendees and we make plans for our next in-person meeting planned for Spring 2026. Based on the feedback received from attendees it’s clear that there is a high desire for this type of training and we look to continue to grow in the number of attendees that are able to participate (goal of 140-150 for our next conference) while maintaining the opportunity for meaningful and close interactions between faculty and attendees. We also have a YouTube video channel (Africa Partners Medical Training) with some recorded sessions that can be accessed by anyone who is interested. We also hope to help facilitate dissemination of similar conferences to other West African countries and are pleased that partners in Nigeria have hosted two successful conferences in 2023 and 2024.
On behalf of all the faculty and attendees from the 2024 APM Young Doctors and Nurses Conference we thank you all for partnering with us! Words of thanks from specific attendees and contact names and email addresses are available as attachments if you’d like to read more and/or send notes of encouragement to these young and dedicated health professional making a difference in the lives of patients every day and helping to fulfill the mission of APM to prevent needless deaths and suffering.
