Two-day workshop at District Hospital on Emergency and Critical Care Mentoring

Mysore/Mysuru: China’s decision to impose fresh lockdowns has sent worrying signals to India amid intense speculations about a possible fourth wave of the Coronavirus hitting the country in the days to come.  

Though the COVID-19 situation in India remains fully under control with a sharp decline in new and active cases, experts have warned about the fourth wave around mid-June. They have cautioned against lowering the guard and have pressed for continuous monitoring of local level epidemiology, continuous genomic sequencing to identify any new variants of interest and concerns.

In this direction, a two-day workshop ‘Emergency and Critical Care Mentoring’ was organised for doctors, healthcare providers and support staff of the Mysuru District Hospital to better equip them to deal with any emergency situations where decisiveness plays a key role. The workshop demonstrated treatment methods to be taken by the doctors during critical care.

The training programme was organised on Mar. 29 and Mar. 30 by the Health and Family Welfare Department in association with Care India. The training was provided on maintaining a critical care ICU, ventilators and also to provide critical care during emergencies. In all, 15 doctors, 25 nurses and caregivers and over 30 technicians have been trained.

Training team from Bengaluru

The training was provided   under the leadership Dr. Basavaraj Kuntoji, Consultant Physician and Intensivist of Manipal Hospital and Mahaveer Jain Hospital, Bengaluru. Others in the team were Dr. Balakrishna, Dr. Abrar, Dr. Senthil, Dr. Ankit and ICU-trained staff Santhosh and Satish.

Speaking to Star of Mysore, Dr. N.I. Nayaz Pasha, Resident Doctor of the District Hospital, said that the advanced ICU training programme was conducted as part of the District Administration’s capacity-building measures to deal with the fourth wave of the pandemic.

ICU management and SOPs

“ICU management in general, hands-on training in critical care, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and operation of various equipment were taught. The participants were taught how to recognise the changes in patients’ conditions and tackle each situation,” he said.

Topics like infection control practice and bio-medical waste management were explained in the context of Coronavirus. The participants have been trained to handle all possible emergencies that are to sustain the patient’s life.

Ventilator management

Ventilator management too was taught in detail with hands-on training and technicians spoke on how to operate the machines. “Training was provided on safety protocol for health workers like wearing  the personal protective equipment,” he added.

Similar training will be provided to other doctors of different hospitals in Mysuru and a team will be formed at the District Hospital for the same. The challenge is to train enough doctors and nurses to work in an ICU.

“The need of the hour is to leverage technology. Short-term training programmes are conducted for doctors and nurses to deal with this emergency. Such training will also help in treating non-COVID patients. Other aspects of the training were minimising the side-effects of medicines, communicating with the relatives of patients and measures to be taken before declaring a patient dead,” said District Surgeon Dr. H.R.  Rajeshwari Devi.