Summary

The study explores the beneficial effects the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI)
training has on the skills of health workers, specifically in relation to the reduction of morbidity and
mortality in children. The IMCI was developed as a strategy to strengthen the skills of health workers in
identifying and managing conditions that could prove fatal to children, and compares the outcomes of
patient-health worker interactions between those who have received IMCI Training and those who have
not.
The studys methodology included the review and meta-analysis of 72 studies. It found that IMCItrained workers were more likely to correctly classify illnesses compared to those without the training as
well as showing that workers with lower baseline performance showed greater improvements in
prescribing medications, vaccinating children, counseling families on adequate nutrition, and
administering oral therapies. The trend was particularly greater in studies conducted in lower resource
settings (that is to say, settings that lacked resources such as funds and materials) and those with a
higher degree of supervision than other areas.
Reviews and meta-analysis included searching the databases of MEDLINE, EMBASE, Ovid
HealthStar, Global Health, CENTRAL, CINAHL, and PubMed; all organizations that are said to instruct
their health workers on IMCI training. The development of IMCI in the 1990s also placed studies
conducted from then to the time this study was published as favorable referential material.
It was found that performance (i.e. rendering proper health care and information) received a
marked increase in health workers receiving IMCI training ranging from a total duration of 20 hours to 14
days. While this affected the diagnosing of illnesses and dissemination of health information, there was
only a slight difference in the confidence interval of performing immunizations.

Reflection
The conclusion drawn from this study is simple: receiving IMCI training and learning how to use it
is indispensable to rendering the necessary health information and ensuring the wellness of the client,
especially one as particularly fragile as a child. If the performance of a health worker can be
supplemented by IMCI training, the benefits to a newly-formed and novice student nurse can prove to be
even more potent since the training is incorporated into the fundamentals of their training.
When considering the types of conditions addressed by the IMCI (e.g. respiratory disorders,
severe fevers, manifested GI tract infections) and taking the Philippine context into consideration (which
lists these types of illnesses as prevalent among children), the information is made even more invaluable.
An accurate and timely diagnosis could be all that stands between the life and death of a child, and the
rendering of proper care could prove to be a life-saving endeavor.
Upon further reflection, the benefits that we can enjoy as student nurses from receiving IMCI
training are as follows: creating an accurate and timely diagnosis of a condition, selecting an appropriate
method of treatment, establishing a firm foundation of nursing knowledge on the condition and its
manifestations, and improving the quality of nurse-patient transactions in terms of information as well as
rapport.