Together for the rural health – Romania (FASMR)

Name of the activity: Together for the rural health

Country/NMO: Romania (FASMR)

Program: Healthy Lifestyles & Non-Communicable Diseases

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Third Party Activities

General description:

“Together for the Rural Health” is a project which is being carried out at the initiative of the students aiming to give a helping hand to the medical system in Romania through the active involvement of medical students, resident physicians and specialists, partners and medical institutions in investigations and providing healthcare in rural areas.

Focus area:

Prevention of NCDs and Health Promotion

Problem statement:

The shortage of health professionals in rural areas is a problem with major long-term and medium-term effects of the health system which also violates the fundamental right of access to health services of Romanian citizens.
Almost 40% of the graduates decide every year to leave Romania, in order to practice abroad. Together with the lack of facilities, this has led to a huge disproportion.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

Target group: residents of rural areas lacking proper healthcare providers
Beneficiary: all the residents of rural areas that will address our project and the students taking part

Objectives and indicators of success:

1. We aim to provide primary care services for approximately 2000 patients throughout Romania. The assessment will be done by conducting a minimum of investigations: anamnesis, clinical examination, blood glucose, cholesterol and triglyceride determination by means of rapid tests, and an ECG to be interpreted by a specialist.
2. Each mobility to rural areas will involve at least 20 medical students per edition. Before attending the project, the students will go through a training process, in order to sharpen their medical skills and bedside manners.
3. Creating teams formed of students, physicians from various domanis and non-medical volunteers, in order to provide a comprehensive health care.
4. Coverage of at least 5 regions of Romania by involving as many LCs as possible
5. Media coverage for every edition (facebook, radio, television), in order to raise awareness to the lack of medical personnel in the rural areas.

Indicators of success
1. Number of beneficiaries of primary care services
2. Number of media apparitions and the impact in social media.
3. Number of students participating in each edition.
4. The medical skills and knowledge acquired by students (evaluation form)
5. Number of physicians attending each edition.
6. Number of settlements without any healthcare reached.

Methodology:

All the campaigns are organized by the NMO and the LCs. For every campaign, the partnerships and collaborators may differ.
The process begins by selecting the village fo the campaign. All the possible locations are analyzed and filtered using a few criteria: population, distance to the nearest hospital, risk factors in the area. The selected location will be a village that is far from a hospital, with high risk factors for the inhabitants and responsive population.
The second step is contacting the local authorities and establishing the details for the campaing: location for the medical examination of the population, housing and meals for our team, transportation.
By this time, internally, we already signed the partnership and sponsorship contrcts in order to achieve all the medical and non-medical supplies needed in the campaign. Also, now we start selecting the volunteers and the medical personnel joining us and form the team, by interviews, trainings and meetigs. This happens at least a month or to before the actual campaign.
On the location, the patients must go to the following check-points:
-registration: each patient will receive a chart, a registration number and consent will be signed
-general tests: blood pressure, O2 saturation, glucose and cholesterol blood level, ECG
-physical examination: anamnesis, inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation
-specialty exam: ultrasonography, echocardiography and other special tests, if recommended after the physical examination.
In the end, each patient receives a medical letter stating his current health status, prescription if needed, and medical advice.
The last step is to process all the data from the campaign and create a report and statistics in order to asses our work.

Plans for evaluation:

1. After each edition, a statistic report will be done in order to get data on the number of participants, their access to healthcare, diseases prevalent in that area, lifestyle of the participants and age average
2. Evaluation forms on the received medical care will be available for all the participants, at the end of the edition
3. Evaluation forms for medical students and physicians regarding the administrative tasks and quality of the workflow will be handed to all the volunteers at the end of each edition
4. At the end of the campaign we will send an online evaluation form to all the partners and collaborators, regarding our degree of involvement and the quality of the partnership