Student mental health nurses TalkWell in Ethiopia

NHS International Links is a scheme that supports exchanges of knowledge and skills between UK based health organisations and their counterparts in developing countries. Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust joined the scheme in 2004, and since this time strong links have been formed with mental health and learning disability projects in Nigeria, India and Ethiopia. The mental health link with Gondar, a city in the north of Ethiopia, has been supported by the Trust since 2008 and has enabled a wide range of staff to get involved in the training of medical and nursing colleagues. The capacity to deliver mental health services in Gondar is limited two mental health nurses provide an outpatient clinic service at Gondar Hospital, which serves a city population of around 350,000 as well as the surrounding rural areas. There is no psychiatrist working in the region, and the nearest specialist mental health facility is located around 300 miles away in Addis Ababa. psychopathology module to the group in their 2nd year of the BSc in mental health nursing. We started off the module with a full day based on TalkWell - the conversation training resource for mental health staff produced as part of Star Wards. We used a TalkWell training package produced by a Therapeutic Development Worker within Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust that had been successfully tested out with staff on several of our own wards. Due to the structure of nurse training in Ethiopia and the lack of local specialist mental health services, the students had not had the opportunity to undertake clinical placements or talk to patients, so they found this experiential and practical approach to conversational skills very useful.

The Gondar link is an active group that coordinates several trips over to the city each year, and this enables us to have a high profile with medical and nursing students and also to undertake work to support the development of mental health services - including the citys first mental health inpatient unit, which is now at a well-developed stage of planning. Our trip in October 2011 involved an extensive programme of work which included teaching the

In the afternoon, the students put on their uniforms for the first time and it was arranged for each of them to visit one of the wards at Gondar University Hospital. This gave them an opportunity to develop some practical experience of engaging with patients and starting, structuring and finishing a therapeutic interaction. Although the student nurses met patients with physical conditions on general wards, unsurprisingly they were able to identify and explore mental health and related issues (such as anxiety, low mood, trauma and stigma, for example) for all of them. Three TalkWell books had kindly been donated by registered charity Bright, and these were given to the university library for students to access.

Gondar Link Group, October 2011