Congratulations to Clare Komugisha, Research Supervisor at Walimu and recipient of the 2020 Sepsis Alliance’s International Pediatric Sepsis Nurse Award!
Clare has worked with the Smart Discharges Team since 2012, helping develop, validate, and implement their risk stratification and educational and referral-based intervention for reducing post-discharge mortality in children in Uganda. In Uganda, more children die after being discharged from a hospital following treatment for sepsis than during their stay in the hospital. As part of the Smart Discharges Team, Clare has helped bring attention to the under-recognized issue of post-discharge morality in children, and developed tools that nurses and other frontline healthcare workers use to save lives. She was initially involved in the study as a research nurse, enrolling eligible children into the study and providing counselling and referral forms to children’s caregivers upon discharge, before being promoted to Research Nurse Supervisor in 2017.
“As a Research Nurse Supervisor, I was responsible for training and mentoring project nurses to correctly identify and treat children with sepsis and to educate their caregivers on how to best care for their sick child, with a particular focus on reducing deaths after discharge among children recovering from sepsis.”
Recently, she began working as Research Supervisor at Walimu, the Ugandan NGO that implements the Smart Discharges Programming Uganda. In this role, she’s supporting the Smart Discharges Program as it expands across Uganda, as well as the development of new tools for reducing death related to sepsis, including the Smart Triage.
In addition to helping reduce post-discharge death from sepsis, the nursing team that she trained and mentored is also at the frontline of managing children with sepsis.
“While the pandemic resulted in a national lockdown in Uganda, the Smart Discharges team has provided us with appropriate protective equipment and private transport, so that we can continue providing critical care for children at our hospitals. This is incredibly important for our community, because the current ban on public transport means that many of the regular ward nurses are unable to reach the hospital. As a result, my team is providing the initial treatment and general patient care for children with sepsis, as well as post-discharge care.”
Clare plans to use this award to help pay tuition fees for a Masters in Public Health. With this degree she hopes to gain new skills in program evaluation and research, so that in the future she can play an even greater leadership role in developing interventions that improve the care for children suffering from sepsis.
See the official announcement from Sepsis Alliance here.