TY - JOUR T1 - Characterising Kenyan hospitals’ suitability for medical officer internship training: a secondary data analysis of a cross-sectional study JF - BMJ Open JO - BMJ Open DO - 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056426 VL - 12 IS - 5 SP - e056426 AU - Yingxi Zhao AU - Boniface Osano AU - Fred Were AU - Helen Kiarie AU - Catia Nicodemo AU - David Gathara AU - Mike English Y1 - 2022/05/01 UR - http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/5/e056426.abstract N2 - Objective To characterise the capacity of Kenya internship hospitals to understand whether they are suitable to provide internship training for medical doctors.Design A secondary data analysis of a cross-sectional health facility assessment (Kenya Harmonized Health Facility Assessment (KHFA) 2018).Setting and population We analysed 61 out of all 74 Kenyan hospitals that provide internship training for medical doctors.Outcome measures Comparing against the minimum requirement outlined in the national guidelines for medical officer interns, we filtered and identified 166 indicators from the KHFA survey questionnaire and grouped them into 12 domains. An overall capacity index was calculated as the mean of 12 domain-specific scores for each facility.Results The average overall capacity index is 69% (95% CI 66% to 72%) for all internship training centres. Hospitals have moderate capacity (over 60%) for most of the general domains, although there is huge variation between hospitals and only 29 out of 61 hospitals have five or more specialists assigned, employed, seconded or part-time—as required by the national guideline. Quality and safety score was low across all hospitals with an average score of 40%. As for major specialties, all hospitals have good capacity for surgery and obstetrics-gynaecology, while mental health was poorest in comparison. Level 5 and 6 facilities (provincial and national hospitals) have higher capacity scores in all domains when compared with level 4 hospitals (equivalent to district hospitals).Conclusion Major gaps exist in staffing, equipment and service availability of Kenya internship hospitals. Level 4 hospitals (equivalent to district hospitals) are more likely to have a lower capacity index, leading to low quality of care, and should be reviewed and improved to provide appropriate and well-resourced training for interns and to use appropriate resources to avoid improvising.Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. The data that support the findings of this study are available from Kenya Ministry of Health but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. All requests for further use of these data can be made through and with the permission of the Kenya Ministry of Health. ER -