CIMSA & WHO Indonesia Serial Collaborative Workshop on the Maternal Health Pocketbook across 15 Medical Schools in Indonesia
Indonesia is one of the top countries with highest maternal mortality rate in south-east Asia. According to the Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey, the maternal mortality rate in Indonesia reaches 220 deaths per 100,000 live births while MDGs target towards it was 102 per 100,000 live births by the end of 2015. The main cause of maternal death in Indonesia is eclampsia, followed by bleeding, infection, and other disease (such as TB, HIV, etc). Most of these deaths occur because of lack access to health services during pregnancy and childbirth. Those complications were not treated properly as most of them had not received quality care from competent health care provider.
To improve the quality of maternal health care services in Indonesia, WHO Indonesia in collaboration with Center for Indonesian Medical Students’ Activities (CIMSA) held a series of one day workshop across 15 medical schools in Indonesia. It aimed to introduce the Pocket Book of Maternal Health Care for Primary and Referral Facilities (also known as the Maternal Health Pocket Book), EDUKIA website (edukia.org), and the iOS app of the pocket book. We chose MADRE as name of this workshop. MADRE, which means ‘mother’ in Spanish, is an abbreviation for “Medical Updates on Maternal Health Care”. The objective of MADRE was to integrate the Maternal Health Pocket Book into the medical curricula as a highly recommended and referenced guideline for maternal health care. The workshops lasting from April 2016 until June 2016 were open for final year medical students (in clinical rotation).
One day workshop of MADRE consisted of three lectures, group discussion, and plenary session. The lectures were conducted by WHO Indonesia and HOGSI (Himpunan Obstetri dan Ginekologi Sosial Indonesia). The first lecture was about the importance of improving the quality of maternal health care services to reduce maternal mortality. In this section, participants learned that maternal mortality is a very challenging health problem arises from the complex interplay of multiple factors and determinants, such as poor family planning, gender inequality, and lack of access to quality health services. In second lecture, participants were trained how to use the pocket book properly. After that, the last lecture was introducing EDUKIA website and the iOS app of the pocket book to the participants as online learning resource they can use to gain more information related to maternal and child care.
The lectures followed by a group discussion, in which the participants were given opportunity to demonstrate their skills in using the pocket book to solve clinical cases. In plenary session, a representation of each group came forward to present clinical case they were discussed before. All participants discussed it together afterwards. Finally, the workshop was closed with a post test. The pretest and posttest analysis was used to measure workshop output.
