Primary Healthcare Corporation (PHCC) and Action on Diabetes (AoD), a public-private partnership backed by Maersk Oil Qatar, the Ministry of Public Health, Hamad Medical Corporation, PHCC, Qatar Diabetes Association and Novo Nordisk, have successfully delivered 24 diabetes training workshops to more than 1,000 pharmacists since the start of the year.
Delivered by trainers from PHCC and HMC, the workshops and interactive sessions covered technical, clinical and pharmaceutical practice including diabetes mellitus complications, new oral glucose-lowering therapy, insulin basics, GLP-1 agonist drugs, hypertension complications, obesity and diabetes, dyslipidemia and an overview of endocrine disorders.
The sessions included more general and practical advice and guidance on delivering excellent patient care, supporting patient education and counselling as well as helping to build ‘soft skills.’
They also covered topics such as time management, working well under pressure and effective communication skills, as well as exploring how best to build a multidisciplinary, diabetes team.
The workshops directly address a key principle of the National Diabetes Strategy, which is to deal with care and treatment of health conditions across an entire disease sector, and to develop multi-disciplinary approaches to healthcare.
Lewis Affleck, managing director, Maersk Oil Qatar said: “These workshops perform an important role in building the capacity, capability, skills and expertise of healthcare professionals in Qatar. Realising these ambitions and helping take the strategy forward is further evidence of how Maersk Oil Qatar and its Action on Diabetes partners are committed to Qatar for generations to come and to making a meaningful difference to its people.”
Dr Samya al-Abdullah, executive director, Operation Department, PHCC, said
“We’re delighted to continue our long term partnership with AoD and build on our success achieved to date in enhancing the capacity of healthcare practitioners in Qatar. Together, we are confident that we can make strong progress in tackling one of the country’s biggest health challenges and in fulfilling the ambitions of the National Diabetes Strategy.”
Herluf Thomsen, AoD, programme manager from Novo Nordisk, added “Tackling diabetes effectively requires a co-ordinated and multidisciplinary approach. The role of pharmacists alongside other clinical colleagues cannot be overstated. Such workshops and training programmes therefore play a vitally important part in equipping and educating pharmacists with the necessary skills to deliver the best possible patient care.”