An experience which touched my heart…

What do you do when you see an Ambulance struggling for its way in the middle of a traffic fiasco? While you ponder over this tough question, I would like to share with you a recent experience of mine which really touched my heart and made be believe that there’s still good left in the society.

Here I go!

It’s a routine for many of us to push our way ahead, honking, saving our vehicle from all sides screaming at others, getting screamed at, calling out names (with windows closed) while on our way in heavy traffic during peak office hours.

I’m no different. In the middle of this mess one day, I noticed a man in a green shirt (I have a so called short term memory so this has to be really inspirational if I remember the color of his shirt) waving frantically at me in my side view mirror and constantly honking to force me to make way. In routine circumstances, I would have increased the volume of my car stereo and would have chosen to completely ignore him but, since I was running late and suffering from lose stomach accompanied by high temperature (in short Viral fever) I was at the peak of my worst mood ever and I wanted to just get out of the car and give the man a piece of my mind. All of this happened within just a fraction of a second and it took me a while to realize that the sound of an ambulance siren which I was hearing from the past few minutes had suddenly got louder and seemed closer to me now. I didn’t take much time to put things together and figure out that he was actually clearing way for the ambulance and I swiftly dodged my car to one side giving way to both the vehicles. My anger for the man suddenly turned into respect and I started following this biker and ambulance for the sheer curiosity of knowing if the “the Sagacious Fellow” is able to get the ambulance out of the traffic mania and If I could be of any help to them. I could only do this for a while to the best of my capacity as my other road mates started giving me a hard time.

 My heart says he didn’t look like he was related to the patient as he was dressed for office with his backpack and lunchbox hanging from one side and seemed as any other biker on his way to office who just suddenly decides to rescue someone seeking urgent medical help.

Witnessing this short melodrama on the road that day made me recall all the times I have seen an Ambulance stuck in traffic and did nothing. I could relate to the desperation the relatives of the patients would have been going through to get out of the chaos.  A question struck me immediately and I would like to ask you the same, Can our system and more importantly our people not adapt to a system where they proactively start making way for an ambulance or we could have a pilot rider making way and clearing the traffic ahead (Remember the scene in the famous Aamir Khan movie 3 Idiots?) It would not only save time and help preserve the golden hour of emergency treatment but also increase the accountability of our citizens in contributing to build a better emergency healthcare plan for public at large.

-Ms. Ginny Kaushal

  Faculty, INLEAD 

Capacity Building in Hospitals: From Knowing to Doing!

Albert Einstein once rightly said, “Education is not the learning of the facts, but the training of the mind to think.” Learning is an ongoing process. One learns with all the experiences and people that they encounter on a daily basis.  The world today is advancing at such a supersonic speed that what was in trend yesterday becomes a stale news tomorrow.  Hence, there’s a continuous needs to innovate and reinvent yourself every day in order to survive.  Capacity Building is one such process which helps us to achieve this. 

Capacity Building in health is basically “the development of sustainable skills, organizational structures, resources and commitment to health improvement in health and other sectors, in order to prolong and multiply health gains many times over”. One of the main components of capacity building is Skills development, which entails creating and providing knowledge and training to professionals within the respective organizations.

Your staff might have a current level of competency and skill set which is at par with the current industry benchmarks but as the time progresses or as the industry sets its new yardsticks, the skills which were once sufficient and up to date become trivial by the then standards. So, the mantra is to continuously keep building your capacity. 

A study done in Two Intensive Care Units of a 500 Bedded multi-specialty hospital of Delhi NCR echoed the same thing. The report showed the significant positive impacts a particular training program can have  on improving the Knowledge and Practices of Critical care nurses.

During the study, a structured questionnaire was developed in consultation with   WHO Standard Precaution of infection control. The findings of the study showed that the majority of the nurses were females in the age group of 20-30 and had good (KAP 81-90%) Knowledge, Attitude and Practice related to Standard Precautions for Infection Control. The results further stated that there is a significant impact of Knowledge and Attitudes of critical care nurses on their self-reported practices. The study also analyzed the impact of a training intervention on the KAP Scores of Nurses and showed that training has a positive impact and significantly increases knowledge levels related to standard precautions of Infection Control.

The study thus concludes that as Knowledge and Attitude of the Critical care nurses significantly affects their practices for infection control, it becomes imperative for the hospitals to ensure that the nurses have a good level of knowledge and positive attitude for infection control. By implementing regular training programs we can ensure that the staff has sound knowledge and positive attitudes and hence we can inculcate an environment of patient safety. Skill development will not only help in building capacity of efficiently trained staff in healthcare organizations but will also safeguard the basic right of patients of having a safe and healthy environment during their stay at the hospital.

“Everyday is a learning process. Life is a marathon that needs a lot of perseverance.”

-Ginny Kaushal, 

 Faculty, INLEAD 

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