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10 October 2018 | Story UFS
UFS School of Nursing gets funding for mental health project
Ronelle Jansen received research funding to provide adolescents with improved access to mental health services and care.

Ronelle Jansen from the School of Nursing at the University of the Free State (UFS) received research funding as part of a multistakeholder capacity-building project to provide adolescents with improved access to mental health services and care in PHC (primary healthcare) settings. 

The research aims to develop and implement a mobile mental health (mHealth) application screening tool for primary healthcare workers (PHCW) to identify adolescent mental health problems and provide mental healthcare training. 

Under pressure 

Jansen (UFS team leader) says mental health screening is sometimes lacking at the clinic level, because the clinics are so busy. “PHCW are under huge pressure due to the number of people they have to see every day, and due to severe staff shortages.

“There is, amongst others, a huge amount of paperwork that needs to be completed for each patient. The nurses only get about 10 minutes to see each patient and mental health screening is seen as time consuming.”

Early identification 

Jansen says the mHealth tool will focus on adolescents and they hope that the mobile application will help nurses with early identification of mental health problems. The clinic staff will then be able to treat and refer the patient correctly. 

She says they hope an accessible and user-friendly mobile tool will also help to motivate PHCW to more regularly screen for mental health problems.

This research is a three-year project co-funded by the Erasmus + programme of the European Union. Nine universities will collaborate on the project. Other partner institutions include the Turku University of Applied Science in Finland (project coordinator); Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany; Riga Technical University in Latvia; the universities of Stellenbosch; Cape Town; Pretoria; the University of Zambia and the Lusaka Apex Medical University.

Jansen says the benefit of the research may be that PHCW will be better empowered to screen for mental health problems, with the aim to improve adolescent mental healthcare and train competent PHCW.

News Archive

Five Kovsies take part in exclusive Summer School in Groningen
2012-07-25

Michael van Niekerk, Christiaan Nel and Carika Stols participated in the School for Neurosciences.
26 July 2012

For five students from the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Free State, the winter holidays were no time to rest; they attended a summer school for medical students in Groningen in The Netherlands.

Michael van Niekerk, Marcel Nel, Henk Kruger, Christiaan Nel and Carika Stols are all undergraduate medical students who expanded their skills and knowledge during the summer school.

The University of Groningen’s Medical School offers an annual Summer School Programme at the University Medical Centre in Groningen.

It is the largest hospital in the province of Groningen in The Netherlands and offers highly specialised health services to The Netherlands and to the northern parts of Germany.

Hordes of students from around the world annually apply for attendance of the school. A panel invites eligible candidates from the applications to participate in the school. The students are then divided into four different schools, namely Paediatrics, Neurosciences, Global Health and Oncology.

“Besides acquiring better skills and knowledge, the schools also provide us the opportunity to exchange experience and knowledge with participants from other countries. We had regular conversations with students from Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, Brasilia, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Egypt, Belgium, Italy and Spain, on the difference between the medical systems and cultures of the various countries,” says Henk Kruger, who, together with Marcel Nel, participated in the School for Paediatrics.

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