The Gulu Diagnostic Imaging Project (GDIP), run by Health Education England (HEE), was developed to support capacity building in the imaging services of two hospitals in Gulu, a city in the north of Uganda.

The project was co-designed and developed by HEE and key stakeholders, including the overseas partners, between February 2020 and January 2021. The aim was to provide opportunities for NHS staff with imaging expertise to participate in global learning opportunities and to support the development of imaging services at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital Lacor. This two-week skills project was developed in response to a request from the overseas partner for face-to-face teaching in radiology.

Since I qualified as a reporting radiographer, a significant part of my role has been training and educating healthcare professionals. This has included teaching on various postgraduate reporting programmes, as well as working with different staff groups from radiology and wider disciplines.

Value of face-to-face interaction

While the pandemic led us to explore the many benefits of online learning, the value of face-to-face interaction and synchronous learning should never be underestimated. Volunteering on the GDIP afforded me the opportunity to combine my enthusiasm for teaching with developing practice in a healthcare setting that would be alien to most radiographers in today’s NHS.

The coordination of training from the UK was challenging and therefore much of the final planning was undertaken while in Uganda. After arriving in the capital city, Kampala, we were welcomed by Joe Bwambale, the President of the Society of Radiographers for Uganda. In our discussions about the project, he explained the need for consistency and standardisation with regards to imaging protocols across the country and we explored the possibility of creating an online community of virtual volunteers to support the project.

After spending just one day at St Mary’s Hospital Lacor, it dawned on me how fortunate we are in the UK. Seeing families camped out in the hospital grounds made a lasting impression on me. It was explained that it is normal practice for hospital patients to be washed and fed by their families because nurses only provide limited levels of care, such as dispensing medication. 

Uganda’s healthcare system works on a referral basis relating to levels of severity and complexity. While the government provides some healthcare services for free, other services and treatment require patients to pay. Against the backdrop of the country’s challenging social and economic factors, I witnessed at first hand the consequences and limitations this placed on some Ugandans.

I was joined on the two-week skills trip by a radiology registrar, who delivered ultrasound training while I focused on X-ray image interpretation. In Gulu, radiology examinations were not reported on because of a lack of radiologists. Accordingly, it was appropriate to focus my efforts on those referrers who were solely responsible for reviewing images. 

Our two weeks of skills training complemented the project by supporting a small number of long-term volunteers, who were predominantly working with radiographers to improve image quality. Together we managed to deliver training in ultrasound and image interpretation to more than 150 participants across 24 sessions. 

The sessions took a variety of forms, from case-based learning in an outpatient clinic to bi-weekly medical learning meetings with up to 30 staff from different departments. Staff were assessed before and after training to gauge their progress. During the second week, we established connections with the local university and delivered teaching to the medical students on intensive care, with a specific focus on musculoskeletal trauma and chest X-ray interpretation.