Improving Healthcare in Tblisi, Georgia

by | Jul 30, 2017 | Blog

Our journey to Tblisi…

With child and family centered healthcare at the forefront of our minds, we recently embarked on an exciting and powerful journey to Tblisi, Georgia where we reunited with colleague and Standish Advisor Khatuna Dolidze, PhD, MS, CCLS 10 years after first beginning to establish programming at the Joann Medical Center. Along with Khatuna and the leadership team of the Joann Medical Center, Standish helped to assess, promote, and enhance child and family centered healthcare. Psychosocial programming at the Joann Medical Center has gained a great deal of momentum over the past decade, thanks largely to Khatuna’s work on the ground. The program now employs 11 and supports 3 hospitals in Georgia.

Our trip was planned and organized by our local partner: the Georgian Association for the Care of Children’s Health. GACCH is a group of psychologists that seeks to promote the healthy development of children and to improve psychological and social services in healthcare settings in Georgia.

During a meeting at the U.S. Embassy with Damian Wampler, the Cultural Attache in the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Department of State, we reminisced about the 10-year anniversary of their funding of Andy Standish’s first trip to Tbilisi in 2007. We hope our grant application to expand child and family centered healthcare trainings will be accepted.

We trained 15 healthcare providers at Joann Medical Center; a cardiac care hospital in Tbilisi. Trainees reported a 28.2% increase in knowledge and the improvement in importance to work was 23.9%. These are statistically significant improvements. Feedback from trainees and the managers was excellent. And one manager reported an “immediate improvement in outcomes for staff and patients.”

We hosted a Leadership Summit at Joann Medical Center which managers from 12 departments attended. We discussed next steps in their plan to align their child and family centered healthcare practices in accordance with the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child.

After meeting with leadership, we took tours of Tsitsishvili Children’s New Clinic and M. Lashvili Children’s Hospital. Both hospitals are interested in Standish Foundation training.

Standish had the joy of delivering donations that made hospital staff and children and families very happy. Thank you for your support. We appreciate your comments and likes on social media. Thank you for helping to promote our mission.