Knowledge Translation Unit launches PALSA PLUS documentary at Lung Health Conference

8 November 2007

The University of Cape Town Lung Institute’s Knowledge Translation Unit has launched a documentary on their PALSA PLUS programme to coincide with the 38th World Conference on Lung Health being held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre until 12 November.

South Africa’s TB and HIV epidemics are imposing escalating demands on public-sector primary care services which are staffed by nurses with minimal support from doctors. Yet undergraduate nursing curricula have traditionally not prepared nurses for independent clinical practice.

PALSA PLUS, or Practical Approach to Lung Health and HIV/AIDS in South Africa, has been developed and refined through research and hands-on experience in the Free State and Western Cape provinces. It adopts an evidence-based approach to in-service training, equipping Department of Health nurse managers as outreach trainers who in turn use concise easy-to-use guidelines and training materials to train nurses and other health care workers on-site at the clinic.

“Our training approach represents such a large departure from current practices for training and updating health workers that we felt written descriptions in research publications and reports were not able to effectively communicate this to managers, hence the film” says the Unit’s Head, Dr Lara Fairall.

To date the programme has reached 2770 nurses in 325 clinics. Research shows that it improves quality of care for TB, HIV/AIDS and respiratory diseases, and results of an economic evaluation of its cost-effectiveness will be presented at the conference.

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