Sustainable Cleft Care Through Education: The First Simulation-Based Comprehensive Workshop in the Middle East and North Africa Region

Abstract

Objective: To describe the conduct of the first multidisciplinary simulation-based workshop in the Middle East/North Africa region and evaluate participant satisfaction. Design: Cross-sectional survey-based evaluation. Setting: Educational comprehensive multidisciplinary simulation-based cleft care workshop. Participants: Total of 93 workshop participants from over 20 countries. Interventions: Three-day educational comprehensive multidisciplinary simulation-based cleft care workshop. Main Outcome Measures: Number of workshop participants, number of participants stratified by specialty, satisfaction with workshop, number of workshop staff, and number of workshop staff stratified by specialty. Results: The workshop included 93 participants from over 20 countries. The response rate was 47.3%, and participants reported high satisfaction with all aspects of the workshop. All participants reported they would recommend it to colleagues (100.0%) and participate again (100.0%). No significant difference was detected based on participant specialty or years of experience. The majority were unaware of other cleft practitioners in their countries (68.2%). Conclusion: Multidisciplinary simulation-based cleft care workshops are well received by cleft practitioners in developing countries, serve as a platform for intellectual exchange, and are only possible through strong collaborations. Advocates of international cleft surgery education should translate these successes from the regional to the global arena in order to contribute to sustainable cleft care through education.

Simulation-Based Comprehensive Cleft Care Workshops: A Reproducible Model for Sustainable Education

“…All participants reported that they would participate again in a similar workshop and recommend it to colleagues. This highlights the potential of these workshops in promoting sustainable cleft care in areas of need through capacity building and education (Kantar, 2019c). The results reported in this manuscript reinforce the potential role of our simulation-based comprehensive cleft care workshop as reproducible model for comprehensive cleft surgery education, with participants continuing to report an overwhelming satisfaction with the workshop.…”

“…Services provided encompass the entire spectrum of cleft care, including surgical, dental, speech, nursing, psychosocial, and nutritional services among others. In line with our commitment to providing sustainable cleft care and building health care capacity in areas of need, we recently strengthened our educational efforts and organized the first simulation-based comprehensive cleft care workshop in the Middle East-North Africa region in April 2018 (Kantar, 2019c).…”

“…The workshop was well attended and well received by participants who unanimously reported that they would recommend it to others and participate again in a similar activity (Kantar, 2019c). With these points in mind, we sought to reproduce this effort in Latin America, where significant unmet cleft care needs exist (Kantar, 2019a).…”

“…Participants were also asked if they would recommend the 2019 Lima comprehensive cleft care workshop to colleagues and whether they would participate again in a similar activity. Participant satisfaction with the 2019 Lima workshop was evaluated based on 5 parameters: content, design, instructors, results, and delivery, as previously described (Kantar, 2019c). Each parameter had a maximum Likert scale score of 10.…”

“…Nevertheless, financial and logistical constraints have limited the application of cleft surgery simulation in developing countries. However, we have previously described the first simulation-based comprehensive cleft care workshop in the Middle East-North Africa region, and demonstrated that it was well received by participants (Kantar, 2019c). In the current study, we sought to validate our previous findings, demonstrate their reproducibility in Latin America, and evaluate educational simulation-based comprehensive cleft care workshops as a model for sustainable care in regions where significant barriers to comprehensive cleft care exist.…”