U.S. Army is helping Emory U. and PfID to improve health care in Georgia
Construction will start this summer on a $400,000 U.S. government-funded medical education center in Tbilisi, Georgia that seeks to improve the quality of nursing and emergency medicine throughout the country. Funded through U.S. European Command's humanitarian assistance program and a grant from U.S Agency for International Development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-managed project will renovate space for a simulation center, classrooms, a clinical skills laboratory, and a distance learning, telemedicine and library/media center of Emory U and PfID at Tbilisi's Academician Nikoloz Kipshidze Central University Clinic, better known as the Republican Hospital. The project, which requires about 750 square meters (8,072 square feet) of hospital renovations, is expected to take less than 300 days.Once renovations are completed, Emory University, PfID and Tbilisi-based Chavchavadze State University will team to e stablish a modern curriculum for medicine and nursing programs.Only nursing program is anticipated to turn out more than 1,000 nurses each year.
Rear Adm. William Brown, logistics chief for the U.S. European Command, visited Tbilisi December 15-16 to assess the command's humanitarian assistance program in Georgia. The admiral took a tour of the Republican Hospital where EUCOM has partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Europe District, U.S. Agency for International Development, Emory University's School of Medicine and Partners for International Developmen (PfID) and Chachavadze State University on the construction and establishment of a learning center, specifically for nurses (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Rachel Goodspeed).
U.S.Army
New Teaching Site of the Partners for International Development in Avlabari named after Archil and Sergo Kobaladze
PfID has named its new Center for Experiential Learning and Research in Avlabari after Archil and Sergo Kobaladzes. The Center has been created to implement the vision of Archil Kobaladze to improve the quality of health care of Georgians through the education of physicians, nurses and administrators.
The Kobaladze Center includes a simulation center, a clinical skills laboratory, classrooms, distance learning, telemedicine and a library providing access to the medical literature of the world. A health care consulting office is part of the center, providing strategic planning services and relevant research in health care delivery and access for the health care sector.
The Center will host the following programs:
- a nursing school;
-
vocational certificate training programs for practicing nurses;
and
- an emergency medicine mini-residency for practicing physicians.
Future programs will include: a three year residency for emergency medicine; updates for primary care physiciansand specialists; health care administrator programs and a program to train specialists in hospital medicine.
Supporters of the Center include: USAID; Emory University ; Academician Kipshidze Central Clinical Hospital ;Ministry of Health, Labour and Social Affairs; Ministry of Education; and the Ministry for the Regions.
Archil Kobaladze was born in 1944 and died of a brain tumor at Emory University Hospital December 24, 2001. He was the founding Georgian partner of the Georgia-Emory-Tbilisi health care partnership. He graduated from the Tbilisi State Medical Institute in 1967, received postgraduate training in Leningrad and defended his PhD thesis on atherosclerosis in 1973. He had a distinguished career in Clinical Pharmacology in Georgia and was a revered teacher of medicine authoring six monographs and seventy-five scientific articles. He was a man of far reaching vision and aspirations for his country: in 1992 he translated and published at his own expense in Georgian The Declaration of Independence of the United States. His son Sergo had a brilliant career as an undergraduate at Emory University, dying tragically in a car accident in Tbilisi six months after the death of his father
Currently PfID and its partners as well as friends of Kobaladzes’ family are in process of fundraising to transform the new site into a truly modern center for teaching and medical research excellence in Georgia.
Archil and Sergo Kobaladze Center for Research and Experiential Learning
PfID Starts Offering Certificate Courses for Practicing Nurses in Country Georgia
Partners for International Development and USAID are pleased to offer vocational education classes for nurses. Each class is designed with today’s Georgian nurse in mind and will be taught by Georgian faculty trained with current international nursing practice guidelines by top professionals in the nursing field. Each course contains half didactic (lecture) and half simulation practice and clinical experience on a model nursing unit.
Every nurse that graduates from this program will have passed a rigorous clinical evaluation and written test to ensure significant improvement in assessment skills and nursing interventions. These courses will improve nursing efficiency, quality of patient care, and significantly reduce the hospitals bottom line costs.
The first course of the General Nursing will start on March 22, 2010.

List of the Courses offered:
- General Nursing and General Pediatric Nursing Course
- Critical Care Nursing
- Emergency Nursing
- Perioperative Nursing
- Obstetrical Nursing
The second course of the emergency medicine mini-residency (certificate) course starts on February 1, 2010. The course is organized by Emory University School of Medicine (Atlanta, Georgia) and Partners for International Development in collaboration with the Kipshidze Central University Hospital and the Tbilisi State Medical University
The USAID Georgia Emergency Medicine Program is implemented by the Emory University School of Medicine and “Partners for International Development” at the Emergency Department of the Kipshidze Central University Hospital since the September 2007. Within the Program the eight months Emergency Medicine mini-residency curriculum has been developed by the Emory Emergency Medicine Faculty to train the first generations of emergency medicine specialists in Georgia. The teaching includes intensive didactic and practical training is conducted by the trained Georgian instructors under direct supervision of the leading Emory Emergency Medicine faculty.
This is a second mini-residency course. The first course completed in 2009 was the Emergency Medicine ToT (train the trainer) course taught by Emory Faculty and seven Georgian graduates of it will teach the second mini residency course.
Potential candidates can contact PfID office in Georgia to schedule an interview and take a written test. Deadline for application is January 18, 2010.
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