Webinar: Grief in Neo-natal care contexts
WEBINAR | Grief within neo-natal care contexts: Perspectives of mothers and health care workers in Kenya.
In low-resource settings, neonatal units often face significant stressors including limited resources, high workloads, and high mortality rates. These realities impact both patients and healthcare providers, with grief and loss adding layers of emotional complexity that require thoughtful navigation.
Join a discussion on the impacts of grief and loss within neonatal units in public hospitals in Kenya exploring the perspectives of mothers and health professionals.
Hear from three health professionals - as they share their reflections, learnings and practical approaches to support patients and colleagues in this context and ensure improved empathy, compassionate care, and support within traumatic contexts.
Our speakers:
- Mwanamvua Boga (a nurse manager, trainer on communication and emotional competence),
- Dr Dorothy Oluoch (a health systems researcher),
- Joan Baswetty (a senior neonatal nurse and mentee trainer)
Through this webinar, co-organised by the CONNECT hub on The Global Health Network (TGHN), and the KEMRI (Kenya Medical Research Institute – Wellcome Trust Research Programme Kenya) enhance your understanding of complex neonatal grief contexts and explore responses to ensure empathy and care for both patients, colleagues, and yourself as a health professional - we encourage you to join this webinar.
The webinar will take place on 26 February 2025, from 12:00 to 13:30 GMT, via Zoom. Register here
Speakers’ Bios l Agenda l Webinar Presentation l Resources
Speaker & Chair Biographies
Chair: Jaom Fisher
Jaom is Coordinator of the CONNECT website hub with The Global Health Network. A qualified social worker, Jaom’s professional experience has encompassed the areas of refugee resettlement and advocacy for people seeking asylum, community engagement and international development, organisational and team capacity building. She has worked in a number of different countries, more recently in Vietnam in community related and project management roles focusing on health, education and equity. While at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (Vietnam) - Public and Community Engagement team her work focused on enhancing the capacity of researchers and healthcare workers to engage with their communities.
In addition to her coordination of Connect, Jaom also works as a Practice Lead with the community and sector capacity building teams at Foundation House, Australia – a specialist service advancing the health, wellbeing and human rights of people of refugee backgrounds who have experienced torture and other traumatic events.
Speaker: Mwanamvua Boga
Mwanamvua is a nurse manager and lead trainer on communication skills and emotional competence for health providers at the Kenya Medical Research institute – Wellcome Trust Research programme (KEMRI-WTRP) Kilifi, Kenya. She is a Registered Nurse (RN) with a higher diploma in critical care nursing from the Kenya Medical Training College, Nairobi and a Masters in Clinical Trials from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. One of her many achievements is being a Global Award Winner of "Heroines of Health (2017)", sponsored by Women in Global Health.
With 20+ years hands on experience in acute paediatric and neonatal nursing expertise and clinical research practice she brings her expertise to training health professionals, researchers, and managers to communicate with emotional competence using reflective practice, experience-based learning approaches, and patients’ experiences. In recent years Mwanamvua has developed and implemented a Training of Trainers program for Sub-County health managers in Kilifi and new-born unit nurse managers across 12 County hospitals in Kenya aimed at strengthening relational leadership among health managers.
Speaker: Dr Dorothy Oluoch
Dr. Oluoch is (PhD) is a post-doctoral research fellow at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Nairobi. She holds an MSc in Medical Anthropology from Brunel University, UK, and a PhD in public health from the Open University, UK.
Her research interests include (1) patient and staff experiences of illness and healthcare and Experience-based Co-design, (2) maternal, newborn, and child health, (3) research ethics, and (4) Evaluation of health systems interventions. Her previous work focussed on exploring the potential for using mothers’ experiences narratives and digital stories of pre-term birth in Kenya as educational tools to improve people-centred care in LMICs. She currently leads studies on families’ and staff's experiences of preterm birth and neonatal care in hospitals. She also leads a study examining childbirth-induced vulnerabilities in Kenya.
Speaker: Joan Baswetty
Joan is a Senior neonatal nurse based at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.
With 16 years of experience working specifically with neonates, Joan is passionate about improving the care of neonates. Based at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Joan has been involved in training for neonatal nursing and medical doctor staff in communication and emotional competence training.
Agenda
Agenda Download I Speakers’ Bios I Top of Page
Abridged Agenda. Times stated are in GMT.
- 12:00: WEBINAR START
- 12:00 - 12:10: Welcome and Introductions: Jaom Fisher, Chair
- 12:10 - 12:20: Setting the scene: Grief experiences within neonatal care units in Kenya: Mwanamvua Boga
- 12:20 - 12:40: Kenyan neonatal care context : Dr Dorothy Oluoch
- 12:40 - 12:50: Grief experience of Newborn unit health care professionals: Mwanamvua Boga
- 12:50 - 13:05: Health systems and grief: Joan Basweety
- 13.05 – 13.20: Interactive Session with discussion and Q&A
- 13:20 - 13:30: Final reflections: Mwanamvua, Dorothy, Joan
- 13:30: WEBINAR CLOSE