Health Staff Ready to Work without Borders

Abstract

Introducing courses on global health in Italian University curricula is essential to improve public health in Italy and to raise awareness in health professionals about global health challenges and inequalities. CCM (Comitato Collaborazione Medica) has developed a structured strategy to provide medical and nursing students and health professionals eager to work/volunteer in low-and middle-income countries with the necessary skills and knowledge to carry out sustainable health-care interventions, that require not only clinical expertise, but also foremost the understanding of local contexts and approaches to care. The comprehensive understanding of the variety of health-care systems at a global level can also help Western health professionals to properly address global migration challenges and the continuously evolving health needs in their own countries. Since 2004, CCM has been organizing training courses for a wide range of Italian health staff (e.g. physicians, nurses, midwives, laboratory technicians, psychologists, social workers) to transfer knowledge, skills and tools that may help them to address health needs in a globalized world. These courses aim to provide participants with soft skills meant at improving the doctor-patient relationship in a variety of contexts and to address health needs holistically; an additional goal is to raise awareness of global health inequities and inequalities and the determinants of health.