In 2022, Birmingham City University Centre for International Health Partnerships worked in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Zambia and the Critical Care Nurses Association of Zambia, as part of UKRI / Newton Research project we developed, piloted and delivered a new trauma workshop for emergency and trauma and critical care nurses. The workshop continues to run and is now delivered in education institutions across Zambia who deliver critical care courses.
In 2025; the Centre facilitated a team from Kamuzu University of Health Sciences School of Nursing to come to Zambia and participate in the national trauma workshop. The team returned to Malawi and working with the Centre and a secondary level district hospital in Malawi, they developed their own trauma workshop.
The training focuses on the patient pathway from the point of injury to rehabilitation and includes topics major incident response (including the hospital response), paediatric and obstetric trauma, complex wound management and post-intensive care syndrome. The workshop is not just theoretical; it has practical elements throughout which culminate in a multi-disciplinary pre-hospital / emergency department major incident. This provides an opportunity to work with emergency services to test out and refine their major incident plans and emergency preparedness response.
The workshop in Malawi was delivered at Kasungu District Hospital (KDH), a public secondary-level hospital located in Kasungu District in Malawi's Central Region. The hospital is situated along the M1 Road, the country's main north-south road, approximately 127 km north of Lilongwe, the capital city. The hospital's location is particularly relevant because the road is a major transportation corridor and has a high burden of trauma cases. The inaugural workshop was facilitated Dr Chris Carter an expert in trauma and critical care in resource limited settings, faculty members from KUHeS, experienced emergency and critical care nurses from Zambia, and clinicians from Kasungu District Hospital.
The workshop was attended by multi-disciplinary healthcare professionals who evaluated the workshop positively and could clearly demonstrate what they had learned. The KUHeS team are now scaling up the trauma workshop for delivery in other hospitals across Malawi.