Cambodia

Cambodia is a country that has experienced tremendous growth in the last decade and in 2015 had eight hospital beds for every 10,000 people¹ suggesting a growing demand for inpatient services.

With a focus on improving surgical outcomes through the Safe Surgery 2020 Initiative, SPECT - in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Assist International - was invited in 2018 to provide education and training to health care workers. In this collaboration SPECT worked with eight hospitals in and around Phnom Penh to offer training and mentorship in sterile processing technique. The project included completing pre-assessments, two rounds of training and mentoring (both in person and remotely) and post-assessment follow-up and data collection.

The first course took place in June 2019 and the second in September 2019. Participants who took the training-of-trainers (ToT) course with SPECT in June were employed as trainers in the second course, empowering them to confidently train their colleagues while receiving additional mentorship from SPECT’s educator.  Throughout the project, 66 health care workers were trained, 34 of whom received the additional ToT training. Participants included 49 nurses, 5 midwives, 4 cleaners, 4 administrators, and 1 Ministry of Health representative.

“I feel a lot of different from before I attended the training, and when I apply the new instrument cleaning and sterilization process. I feel it is safer for me, other staff and especially patients.” - Training participant

“I made a lot of change sand improved my knowledge and skills. I changed the cleaning and sterile processing in the hospital, such as unlocking instruments, environmental cleaning, cleaning instruments, and stopping the use of chlorine solution 0.5% or bleach - only detergents are being used - the packing process, at point of use cleaning immediately after using, and covering with clothes while transporting instruments to the cleaning zone.” - Training participant

¹ GHO | By country | Cambodia - statistics summary (2002 - present). (2020). Retrieved from http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.country.country-KHM