Building Capacity for Screening & Early Diagnosis of Colorectal Cancer Through a Comprehensive Colonoscopy Training Program in Nigeria

This protocol seeks to develop a colonoscopy training program in Nigeria in order to increase the number of health care providers proficient in colonoscopy. The goal is to improve capacity for screening and early diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) by training and expanding the healthcare workforce that is competent in endoscopy techniques. The project has three components, a needs assessment, simulation training, and training on live patients. The first part of this project determines the number of providers and endoscopy procedures currently performed in Nigeria, as well as patient access to facilities that have colonoscopy capabilities, through a mixed methods approach. Surveys, focus in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, and use geographic information system (GIS) modeling technology will be employed to perform a needs assessment. The second component of this project investigates whether a locally developed low fidelity (LF) simulation colonoscopy training model is an effective teaching, training, and assessment tool for skill acquisition and confidence compared to a high-fidelity (HF) colonoscopy model. The third component of this project is training healthcare providers on real patients who have an indication for colonoscopy. This project seeks to build capacity for endoscopy services in order to increase capacity for screening and early diagnosis of CRC. At the end of the project, it is expected the number of providers trained to perform colonoscopy in a resource limited setting like Nigeria will increase.