By Marie-Claude Pelchat | Project Leader
From September 18 to September 22, Sunshine Foundation in cooperation with Asociación Pro-Niños Quemados De Nicaragua (APROQUEN) held in Managua, Nicaragua the second training on the management of the burned hand for therapists in Latin America. This course brought together 11 therapists from 8 Latin American countries: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.
This course continued a training program started in 2016. The first year training focused on explaining the “how” of hand management, including basics about hand anatomy, common forms of hand deformity and their cause, the principles behind evaluating a burned hand, etc. The second year training was about participants demonstrating how they have been applying the new knowledge and skills in their clinical practice, with many hands-on practical activities to further strengthen the hand evaluation skills and ability to design a rehabilitation plan of participants.
Participants mentioned that with this year’s training, many theoretical concepts that seemed abstract at first suddenly gained a whole new sense. For example, by continuously analyzing a hand problem through the lenses of anatomical structures, participants were able to appreciate why last year’s anatomy lecture was so important… even though participants found it very difficult! A participant from Guatemala explained: “Before this training, we weren’t used to analyzing hand problems so specifically, so we weren’t able to set a clear rehabilitation goal and in the end, the interventions that we planned probably were not the most efficient or the best targeted to the problem. Now I know where my strengths and weaknesses are!”
Due to the long term functional implications of hand burn and the complexity of dealing with this type of injury, management of the burned hand is a crucial aspect of rehabilitation for which further capacity building is needed. Thanks to your generous support, Sunshine Foundation aims to help burn therapists improve through trainings their practice and provide the best level of care, so that burn patients recover and return to a normal, active life as soon as possible.
By Marie-Claude Pelchat | Project Leader
By Marie-Claude Pelchat | Project Leader
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
