With Tamil Nadu accounting for 17,000 road traffic accident (RTA) deaths in a year, efforts are on to strengthen the government hospitals in the management of emergencies. In a step towards this, a total of 160 government nurses will undergo 10 days of intensive training in dealing with trauma and non-trauma emergencies at Christian Medical College (CMC) beginning Monday.
The Tamil Nadu Accident and Emergency Care Initiative (TAEI) and Nursing Services of CMC have come together to train nurses in emergency care. TAEI, implemented through National Health Mission, was formed with a focus on saving lives during pre hospital, intra hospital and rehabilitation care of trauma casualties, a press release said.
Shoba, State programme manager of TAEI, said RTA was a major concern in the country, with Tamil Nadu accounting for 17,000 RTA deaths in a year. “This meant that 50 to 60 lives are lost in a day. Nearly 90% of those who died were in the productive age group of 18 to 45 years,” she said at the inauguration of the training programme.
Almost a year and a half ago, TAEI started to work with pre-hospital care, beginning with the 108 ambulance system, she said, adding, “We analysed the RTA data available with the police department. We divided the State spatially and geographically into 32,000 grids of 2x2 square kilometres. We listed the top 100 grids in which 7,000 to 8,000 persons were killed in RTAs. We also listed 15 districts in which more than 500 were killed in a year.”
Following this, they started to move into in-hospital care of trauma cases. “We do not have a network of trauma care centres and there is no standard protocol in the emergency rooms,” she said.
Under TAEI, five government hospitals – Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, Chennai, government hospitals at Villupuram, Perambalur, Cuddalore and Tambaram – have been selected as pilot hospitals.
“Government hospitals have to be strengthened in RTA management, and capacity building is the key. Government hospitals have all facilities but no protocol in place. We want to expand to other GHs too. This training of trainers is a beginning,” she explained. She added that they were in the process of evolving a training programme for doctors too.
In his address, J.V. Peter, director of CMC, spoke on three domains - infrastructure, expertise, protocols and systems.
“Protocols and systems are constantly evolving. Many of the protocols and systems put in place here have been adopted from systems followed worldwide,” he said.
Contemplating whether the Australian or UK system of trauma care was suitable, he said they could work on a suitable hybrid model.
