The Pacific Island Health Officers Association during its meeting in Majuro this week has focused on the lack of accredited professional training opportunities available to workers in public health, dental and allied health.
“Health conditions in the United States-affiliated islands in the Pacific will never improve without a well-trained workforce in place,” said Dr. Gregory Dever, who is the director of clinical services at Palau Hospital and was the director of the Pohnpei-based Pacific Medical Officers Training Program that in the 1990s trained close 100 doctors working in the United States-affiliated Pacific islands.
Speaking bluntly about the shortage of health professionals and the lack of accredited training opportunities for current health workers Dever said in Majuro that partnerships between health departments and community colleges in the region are leading to the first two-year degree courses in public health and expanding efforts to prepare high school students for health careers.
“On-the-job training has served okay over the years, but our health care colleagues need to provide tracks for workers other than on-the-job training by people who were themselves trained on the job,” Dever said. He made the point that although health workers attend numerous workshops and in-service trainings, these are not accredited and the workers do not receive pay increases for such upgrades.
“Our health workforce is not doing a bad job, but they deserve more and our patients deserve more,” said Dever. It is time to move from the old on-the-job training model to a “new paradigm to serve our workforce and the patients,” said Dever. As an example of the challenge, he said of the 52 laboratory technicians in the six U.S.-affiliated islands in the region, only seven graduated from certified degree courses. The rest were trained on the job.
Dr. Mark Durand, who recently conducted a “human resources for health” assessment in the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and the Northern Mariana Islands said “on-the-job and other ad hoc training has been a failure” in the region, and health officials in these islands agree there is a “need to move away from Health Services doing its own trainings” to having them done by colleges and other institutions.
“Our goal is to take current public health staff and raise their skill level by an accredited training process,” Dever said. “They can take accredited training to (their government’s) personnel office and get a raise in pay for their hard work.”
The first step in the plan is the rollout next month of a new two-year degree program in public health at the College of Micronesia in Pohnpei. The February course start is aimed at currently working public health staff in the FSM, with the college planning to offer the degree course to non-working students beginning in September.
Palau Community College is expected to follow with a similar associate of science degree program in public health, and Dever said he will be meeting with College of the Marshall Islands and Ministry of Health officials while in Majuro to see if a similar public health degree program can be offered in Majuro.
Already in motion are talks with San Diego State University to offer bachelor level degrees in public health as a step up the ladder for people who get their two-year degrees in public health or who already have two year degrees.
Colleges in the Marshall Islands, Pohnpei and Palau are already providing nursing training. And a plan of action for professional dental training is under consideration by PIHOA, which represents health leaders from Palau, FSM, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands and American Samoa.
“Many Micronesian doctors trained in the 1950s and 1960s were not allowed to go for formal training (after they started working) and we decided we were not going to allow that to happen again,” Dever said as the motivation to launch partnerships between health departments and local colleges.
