Hospital preparedness for Ebola virus disease: a training course in the Philippines

To develop, teach and evaluate a training workshop that could rapidly prepare large numbers of health professionals working in hospitals in the Philippines to detect and safely manage Ebola virus disease (EVD). The strategy was to train teams (each usually with five members) of key health professionals from public, private and local government hospitals across the Philippines who could then guide Ebola preparedness in their hospitals. The workshop was developed collaboratively by the Philippine Department of Health and the country office of the World Health Organization. It was evaluated using a pre- and post-workshop test and two evaluation forms. χ(2) tests and linear regression analyses were conducted comparing pre- and post-workshop test results. A three-day workshop was developed and used to train 364 doctors, nurses and medical technologists from 78 hospitals across the Philippines in three initial batches. Knowledge about EVD increased significantly (P