Spotlight on Albania

Soon after the fall of Communism in Albania PRIME was asked to provide teaching modules three times a year into the family medicine residency programme in the capital city, Tirana.

We were then recruited by the USAID programme Training Family Doctors to produce the curriculum and provide teaching input for a pilot study on retraining GPs in Albania which went on to form the basis for the nationwide extension of the training scheme.

PRIME has a lead role in providing multi-disciplinary palliative care training which is barely known in Albania, yet many people die of cancer in their homes or the major hospitals.

We also take part in the annual family doctors' conference and are working closely with Albanian doctors to provide post-graduate training in some of the towns that are more remote from the capital.

PRIME has a lead tutor resident in Albania for six months each year. This gives her opportunities to co-ordinate the continued medical education (CME) sessions that PRIME has been asked to conduct as an approved provider and to act in a support role for Christian doctors and medical students.

The programmes delivered in Albania are many and varied - they now include mental health, cardiology as well as the long standing CME. general practice and palliative care programmes.

Since the inception of the Government Continuing Medical Education scheme 18 months ago with its requirements for credits there has been an increase in medical education activity within Albania and PRIME has been at the forefront of providing some of the teaching.

PRIME is developing partnerships with other Christian organisations as well as maintaining the long established working relationship with the Palliative Care and Education Centre in Lezhe.

“This is what my country needs, a marriage of the spiritual and the clinical.” Lead family medicine teacher.

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