In the Marshall Islands, a tragic incident illustrated the consequences that can result when health care needs are not supported by effective health care management:
A woman with no known health problems came to the emergency room of her local hospital when she suddenly developed severe back pain and began sweating intensely. There was no attending physician in the ER, only a medic, and four hours passed before the ER staff decided to evaluate the woman’s heart.
The ER had no dedicated EKG machine, so a nurse rushed all over the hospital, finally locating the facility’s one EKG machine in the intensive care unit. However, as a foreign donor had donated the machine, its plug did not match local electrical outlets. The patient’s daughter hurried to the store and bought a converter so the test could be administered. By then the woman was found to be in severe cardiac distress, and despite reaching the on-call physician for guidance, efforts to manage her blood pressure failed. The woman went into acute cardiac arrest and died.
This scenario – the misuse and mismanagement of resources resulting in poor health outcomes – is regrettably common across the Pacific Island region where health care funding per capita is notably higher than in other developing regions.
Addressing the health challenges in the North Pacific is The Pacific Island Health Officers Association (PIHOA) – a non-profit organization that represents the collective health interests of the people of the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands and across hundreds of islands and atolls. Ultimately, they have identified this systemic and ongoing problem of strategic resource management as a key regional challenge.
To begin rectifying this issue, PIHOA established a regional training partnership with The Union’s International Management Development Programme (IMDP) through The Union Asia Pacific.
In May, IMDP offered a five-day course on “Performance-Based Programme Management” as an introduction to a broader strategic resource management curriculum. Held in Tumon, Guam and attended by 15 participants from 8 islands, the course used hands-on exercises, working groups, regional case studies and implementation-focused action planning to launch the process of measurably improving resource management throughout the region.
Halina Palacios, a participant, who works as a Conference on Quality of Project Management Manager on the Marshall Islands, said, “I felt that the teaching technique was the best I've experienced so far: everything from the group size, to the grouping of participants, and especially the hands-on exercise. I think the presenters knew that words and lectures are truly successful if they can be implemented by the participants.”
Plans for two additional courses targeting key elements Strategic Resource Management are under discussion for the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016, and both PIHOA and The Union hope their collaboration will contribute to much-improved health care and fewer needless deaths in the region.
Learn more about IMDP courses around the world.