NGO launches maiden tele-nursing in Nigeria

A non-governmental organization, Lead Nurse Africa International Foundation has launched the maiden Tele-nursing in Nigeria.

Speaking at an event to launch, the Executive Director of the NGO, Collins Ogboli said the launch of the tele-nursing is in with partnership with Alkin services international based in the United Kingdom.

Explaining, he said, “this programme is tele-nursing /nurses guide conference. We intend to bring resource persons all over the world to help build capacity on nursing so as to facilitate tele-consultation, professional capacity building

“We plan to having monthly nursing programme that will guide nurses towards professional excellence. This will also help our projects of public health in rural areas in the country; going for children with HIV/AIDS that don’t have people to take care of them, carry out community health outreach, carry out research that will enable us generate data that will help us know how to address the poor health indices in the country.”

Tele-nursing refers to the use of telecommunications and information technology in the provision of nursing services whenever a large physical distance exists between patient and nurse, or between any number of nurses.

Ogboli said, the aim of the tele-nursing is to deliver care, educate nurses and improve professionalism.

“The programme we intend carrying out in our organisation is that when we go to a community and we carry out our community assessment, we identify that about 50 persons are diabetic and 50 persons are hypertensive and then through our health point station (individuals trained to participate in taking care of their fellow citizens), they alert us and we intervene to avert possible danger.

“Then if there is any health center in the community that needs our help, for instance if they have a case that they cannot handle, they can connect with us and we will direct them on how to handle such cases and this is possible because we have communication connection in almost all the rural areas in the country.”

According to him, tele-nursing can facilitate nursing consultation, learning, professionalism, community health outreach.

Also speaking, Stephanie Ikodiya Kalu, Director of Operation at the foundation said, “We believe in enlightening the African nurses and we know that some of the challenges we face in Nigeria, most of the other nurses in other Africa nurses also face them and that is why there are lots of nurses moving out of these countries for greener pasture.

“So, we are engaging in tele-nursing to expose our Africa nurses to practicing outside the country that can help them in the development of their skills and profession. We can use Tele-nursing to engage in one-on-one consultation, we can engage nurses even outside this country especially on practical consultation.”

Adding, she said, “With our focus on community outreach, we are bridging a huge gap between the community and the health workers and we know that nurses are the front-line health workers. So, we believe that through Tele-nursing, we can be able to touch the grass-root society.”