Technical Training for Women (Chile)

Chile’s income inequality stands out as being relatively high and is reflected in continuing severe disparities among different demographic groups. Education has been the single most important factor in explaining the difference between the poor and the non-poor. To achieve equity in terms of increased access to opportunity for the poor and vulnerable groups, Chile aims to increase the participation of women in the labour market.

In January 2004, Reledev Australia Limited in collaboration with AusAID and Fundación Centro de Formación Técnica Fontanar commenced the Pilot Project: Access to Technical Skill Training for Underprivileged and Vulnerable Groups of Women in Santiago, Chile. The project has trained women as Nursing Assistants at a level below licensed nurses.

The project helps solve Chile’s shortage of nursing staff. The technical preparation of nursing assistants ensures that adequate care can be provided to patients while licensed nurses fulfil their administrative roles. The response from hospital managers, heads of nursing and nurses alike has been very encouraging.

Reledev representatives visited the project in November 2004 and in October 2005. Reledev is very much encouraged by the results of the project. Excellent feedback was received from supervising nurses and hospital managers, as well as from relatives of patients who profusely thank the students for the human quality of care and their attentiveness to the needs of their loved ones. Some of the best nurses from among hospital staff were also desirous of joining the teaching team. Hospitals are already seeking to hire the students even prior to completing their training.

Heather Beattie, wife of the Queensland Premier, Mr Peter Beattie, inspected the project during her stay in Chile in May 2004. Heather Beattie, a nurse by profession and Director of Teaching and Learning of the School of Nursing (University of Queensland), filed this report. "The project will prepare a minimum of 225 women as nursing technical assistants and the course incorporates a period of clinical placement. Students are expected to find employment relatively easily in these clinical facilities. Already Fontanar has been approached by a number of facilities close-by wishing to offer clinical placement for their students.

"The director of the Nursing Program, Josefina Morales, has conducted extensive collaboration with the industry and with other nurses to establish an innovative program that attempts to prepare technical nurses in a broader way, complementing the role of the licensed nurse. The program runs for 18 months and takes a lifespan approach, with students studying such subjects as basic clinical skills, communication, health education, anthropology, computer application to health, adult, child and aging health problems, mental health, rural health, ethics, emergency care. There is a strong clinical focus with students entering the clinical setting in the first semester", noted Heather Beattie.

This project has clearly identified a pathway for increased participation of women in the labour force. "I was very impressed and I think it is meeting an enormous need", Heather Beattie remarked.

The project will continue from 2007 onward without Australian assistance. It will continue to work toward building equity, inclusion and access to employment for women from rural or urban areas of the lowest socio-economic groups (C, D and E).

Performance indicators	Target at 3.5 years	Results
Women access training
Women access training	225	246 (203 complete)
Hospitals involved in the project	15	21
Women employed	45	68
Participants access clinical experience	150	137
Number of women complete 1,114 hrs experience	45	45

Updated November 2007