Interview with Professor Adeyemi Olu Adekunle
Professor Adeyemi Olu Adekunle is a trained doctor who has taught courses on obstetrics and gynecology at the University College Hospital in Ibadan, Oyo – the teaching hospital for the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan. He is currently participating in a post-graduate program in Population and Reproductive Health for Pan African students at the university. Professor Adekunle recently took part in a training of trainers that SHOPS Plus hosted for the Fertility Research and Endocrinology Unit in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at University College Hospital. The unit is the first of its kind in Africa and serves as a training center for many international organizations working on family planing. SHOPS Plus interviewed him to learn more about his experience.
SHOPS Plus: What is your experience with providing family planning services?
Prof Adekunle: I’ve been providing family planning services since I was a resident at the University College Hospital in 1976. I have done [training of trainers] for so many organizations, including your organization [Abt Associates] for the WELLNESS program, a doctor management program. I conducted [training of trainers] twice for that program and I became really involved when you started SHOPS Plus. I started with a [training of trainers], but I also conducted a [Long-Acting Reversible Contraception] training program. It was interesting because it was a shift from the public sector to the private sector and they were two different things because handling public sector providers was a bit different from the private sector. We even had to reorganize the course. We couldn’t just do a straight course, we had to do the didactic training over a few days and then spread the clinical part of it [over a few days].
I have also done a lot of work for the [Federal Ministry of Health]. I was the family planning coordinator and that gave me an opportunity to develop manuals because we didn’t have proper manuals. We developed over 10 manuals for each aspect of the training program.
SHOPS Plus: What did you learn from the training that you did not know before?
Prof Adekunle: I enjoyed the training. Acquiring knowledge is a continuous things, you always gain something and I have a passion for training. I really enjoy impacting knowledge and I like to see how others do what I do. Like I said, I develop curricula, so what I enjoyed from your training program is your approach to handling some aspects of the teaching skills. For instance, the gender exercise we did was a different approach and I was more interested in how you approached training. The training program you conducted was a non-typical [training of trainers] from what I am used to.
SHOPS Plus: Is there one part of the training that stood out in your mind?
Prof Adekunle: The part that stood out was the participatory approach, involving the participants during the training by giving them an assignment, which is hard thing to adopt in Nigeria and I congratulate you because we had many problems with that.
SHOPS Plus: What was the most useful things you learned?
Prof Adekunle: Many of the new things, like introducing the [subjective, objective, assessment, and plan] approach. I learnt that and also the way you introduce the [balanced counseling] cards is a new thing because ours is more theoretical than what you did. Your talk about levels of training is more theoretical.
SHOPS Plus: How will the information that you learned be helpful in your own work?
Prof Adekunle: I did a lot for the [Federal Ministry of Health] to review their manuals, so, what I learnt from this training program can also be used in curriculum development.