CIESAS Evaluation of ALSO

The following is part of a series of project updates from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia (CIESAS). MHTF is supporting their project, Evaluation of ALSO Program. More information on MHTF supported projects can be found here.

Written by: CIESAS

In the last 3 months, the CIESAS team made an important decision in the design of the ALSO evaluation. The evaluation site was changed from the General Hospital in the coastal city of Pochutla, Oaxaca to the much bigger Civil Hospital Dr. Aurelio Valdivieso in the capital city of Oaxaca. CIESAS made this decision because, unlike we were previously told, this latter hospital does meet basic methodological requirements to carry out the evaluation, and it also is the largest hospital with the greatest load of obstetric emergencies throughout the State of Oaxaca.

CIESAS hired four field-workers, all of them recent graduates from medical school and trained them in the correct implementation of observation checklists and patients’ interviews, as well as in basic hospital research bioethics. All instruments were designed for this particular evaluation and were tested and reviewed before being fully implemented. Since the end of September, fieldworkers have been rotating during the night and the morning shifts in the ER and in the Ob/Gyn Unit of the Valdivieso Hospital, observing and registering the actual management of obstetric hemorrhage and preeclampsia/eclampsia, as well as observing and registering how Ob/Gyns manage normal hospital deliveries.