A mentorship is a relationship between two people where the individual with more experience, knowledge, and connections is able to pass along what they have learned to a more junior individual within a certain field. The more senior individual is the mentor, and the more junior individual is the mentee
The facility is run by two technical staff, a nurse, clinical officer and two non-technical staff. This facility is supported by Population Services Kenya under the DESIP umbrella to offer not only Family Planning (FP) services but also advocate for social inclusion in provision of services to PWDs and adolescent and youth as the marginalized population.
Lorraine Oyiengo a nurse by profession is 33 years old currently based at Ringa health center and she has been offering preventive, promotive and curative services for the last last 6 years. Her first posting was in the year 2014 to Masogo HC where she served the community for one year before being transferred to Got kamondi in 2015. In March 2018, she was transferred to Ringa health centre where she is currently based.
It was during our routine joint support supervision and data quality audit (QDA) visit to Ringa health centre, that the team noticed poor uptake of FP services especially LARC at the dashboard. During feedback session, a number of challenges was identified as causes which hinder uptake of LARC services and it includes: provider skills gap, poor provider attitude on LARC services, incomplete set of IUCD insertion, myths and misconception about FP propagated in the community.
As a team, we came up with action points on how to improve uptake of FP services especially LARC, and OJT/mentorship was the only option available.
We mobilized for models (madam zoe & rita) from the county office and the provider jointly with facility CHPs were tasked to mobilize clients. Day one was purely mentorship on the theory of IUCD and implants insertion/removal including the SOP and later in the afternoon they managed to practice insertion and removal of IUCD using the model. On the second day, we managed to get one client for IUCD. After counselling of the client, she agreed to accommodate the nurse and the facility clinical officer for observation during insertion of the IUCD. On the second day they managed to get another client for IUCD. This time round the SCRHC was there to observe and guide the nurse as she inserts the IUCD. The confidence and a boost in positive attitude towards FP made Lorraine Oyiengo, the nurse the urge to offer her community the essential services which she started to work closely with PS Kenya to organize for an in-reach event in her facility.
After benefiting from close support supervision and mentorship from PS Kenya quality assurance officer and SCRHC, which included OJT on LARC and mentorship, the service provider was confident in offering LARC services especially IUCD services. The Service Provider was had also been oriented to counselling for continuation (C4C), a new counselling technique that ensures clients get to make their own contraceptive choice based on their needs and this greatly helped when it came to educating the client on modern FP options.
Lorraine Onyiego is one of DESIPs FP champion and an advocate for family planning. She is one of the mentors in Rachuonyo East and occasionally supports new providers at the nearby facilities. She accredits PS Kenya & SCRHC efforts in mentorship processes, changing her attitude towards FP and sensitizing the community on the services being offered as what truly increased uptake of methods.
