Background
Many healthcare providers do not have sufficient experience and skills to provide adequate and inclusive quality of care to young people because of lack of training to prepare them for caring for the sexual and reproductive healthcare needs of young people. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated how the initiatives to ameliorate the challenges of health service delivery, for example, for the training of healthcare providers are being implemented. As such innovative approaches such as digital training are becoming among the initiatives to train healthcare providers for an inclusive adolescent and youth friendly SRH services. Therefore, this study evaluates a digital training course on gender-inclusive sexual and reproductive healthcare and rights of adolescent and youth for health providers in Nigeria.
Method
The study adopted a quantitative data approach using a pre-post assessment of 20 providers trained on a digital platform (Medical Learning Hub).
Result
The result showed that the average knowledge assessment on counselling skills prior to the digital training was 38% and 89% after the digital training. This is showing a significant improvement in counselling skills of the healthcare providers in meeting the SRHR needs of LGBTQi+ youths with a 50% knowledge gain (p< 0.05). Also, the overall average knowledge score prior to the digital training was 44.8% but the score improved tremendously after the training with 76.7% during the post test. This shows 31.9% significant knowledge gain of the healthcare providers on the SRHR needs of LGBTQi+ Youths, which is statistically significant at 95% Confidence Interval.
Conclusions
This study concludes that using digital platform to strengthen the skill, knowledge and attitude of health workers is the most cost-effective and efficient means of capacity strengthening for health workers in Nigeria.
Keywords: Digital Training Course, Gender Inclusiveness, Sexual and Reproductive Health Care, Adolescents and Young Persons
