Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH)’s affiliation to the University
of Nairobi (UoN) and the Kenya Medical Training Colleges KMTC Nairobi
campuses has bode well for it.
This may explain the
difficulty in dissociating itself from the two. The symbiosis is
predominantly knowledge driven, where the former gets a wide pool of
“free” health services from the two. In return KNH provides the learning
environment and equipment.
In 2017 these two
institutions jointly held a conference aptly titled, Transforming
Healthcare Through Research and Innovation. It served to highlight
trends in healthcare towards stimulation of evidence-based interventions
by medics.
But it isn’t just the learning that the
partnership benefit from, by virtue of their association they boast
easily of the region’s biggest producer of medical research material.
To put things into perspective, KNH and UoN jointly host about
300 senior doctors, close to 500 postgraduate doctors and over 1,200
clinical years’ medical students. In addition, senior nursing and
clinical officer staff are also domiciled there. No other county
facility has such a health workers’ density.
A few
other interesting statistics about KNH. It has about 2,400 beds that
depending on patient accommodation configurations (single patient at low
peak and double occupancy of some beds during high peak) can hold 2500
patients.
The hospital also conducted an incredible
21,000 or thereabout surgical procedures last year! Mind boggling
statistics in comparison to other hospitals.
All these
make KNH a popular ground for healthcare researchers. A look at the
2014-2016 ethics review board shows a rich mix of health topics across
all cadres were approved for study. A similar evaluation of the
University of Nairobi’s postgraduate medical school’s theses also shows
good work.
Did the conference’s desired objectives take root?
Quite
the contrary, most peripheral hospitals in counties do not conduct
clinical research work or studies to evaluate their work. A dearth of
research generally correlates with lower quality care, because one
cannot critic the output.
The question for health
system managers is whether this is a matter of capacity or lack of
resources? One side will argue that KNH and the university wield heavy
influence in attracting funding for research work. The other will say
counties must create budget lines for their medics to stimulate research
work.
It is almost embarrassing that some hospitals
have never conducted any research work 20 years after being founded. Our
hospitals need to adopt research as an appraisal component of health
workers, more so the doctor fraternity particularly when evaluating
staff on promotions and compensations.
Senior doctors must spearhead the initiative to convince counties to set funds aside to carry out such studies.
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