Participant perceptions of disability training for health workers: a qualitative study in Ghana

Disabled people often report poor treatment by health workers, and health workers often report wanting more training about how to care for disabled people. However, existing disability training for health workers is usually delivered in one-off interventions, with little follow-up, evaluation, and focus on long-term learning. This insufficiency makes it important to understand how disability training for health workers can be more effective. Therefore, we interviewed stakeholders involved in an existing disability training intervention in Ghana. The aim of the study was to understand how disability training for health workers could be improved by exploring the perspectives of individuals who were involved in previous training interventions.

A phenomenological study was conducted. In-depth, qualitative interviews were conducted with 33 people (17 trainers and 16 trainees) involved in disability training in Ghana. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Participants spoke about the challenges with existing training, namely how the current approach was insufficient, the consequences of informality in running training and the need for more sign language instruction. Several participants suggested improvements for training, including having external motivation (i.e., professional development credits, monetary benefits, etc.), more collaborative initiatives across institutions and government, and curriculum integration. We developed a theory of change model to show how different components of disability training support learning.

These results show that disability training for health workers is important and that there is scope to refine and standardize training. In particular, the findings demonstrate how future initiatives to train health workers can be developed and implemented. They also emphasize the need to solicit perspectives from individuals who have experienced training in order to improve future iterations.