IntraHealth International has created a website for Learning for Performance: A Guide and Toolkit for Health Worker Training and Education Programs (LFP) to enable users to easily access the publication’s content, tools, and links to references and resources. LFP offers a step-by-step, customizable approach to training that focuses on essential job skills and effective learning methods while addressing the application of new skills on the job. LFP emphasizes:

• efficiency (LFP removes unnecessary content and retains only essential content)
• relevancy (LFP incorporates the trainees’ work environment and specific job responsibilities)
• job performance (LFP prepares learners by using experiential, competency-based training methods, and by improving pre- and post-training support so that training is not occurring in isolation).

With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), IntraHealth has applied the LFP approach in seven countries and a variety of situations, including public sector, private sector, pre-service education and in-service training. LFP has been introduced to health worker cadres ranging from physicians and nurses/midwives to community-based health workers.

In India, IntraHealth used Learning for Performance to assist the Ministry of Health in Uttar Pradesh to revise the postpartum care chapter of the pre-service curriculum for a new health cadre: private community midwives. A post-test control group study evaluated the effectiveness and usability of the LFP-revised chapter and found significant improvement over the previous material. At the sites that incorporated LFP 74% of students were able to perform overall to standard on clinical skills, compared with only 17% of students from the control sites.

In Mali’s remote northern zone, IntraHealth used LFP to assist the Ecole des Infirmiers de Gao develop the family planning/reproductive health and child health modules for the nursing and midwifery school curriculum. These modules will be introduced into the curriculum in 2008.

In Bangladesh, IntraHealth used LFP to assist USAID’s Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Service Delivery Project in adapting the national family planning in-service training curriculum to an on-the-job training approach. Trainees learned essential job-related content and participated in simulated and actual client practice to develop their counseling and clinical skills. All trainees passed the knowledge tests and achieved competency in the skills assessment. After the pilot course, the NGOs used LFP to develop a third on-the-job training course on intrauterine device services. All three courses are currently being scaled-up for wider implementation.