Author: Mr. Suresh T, Nursing Officer, Safdarjung Hospital & Volunteer DNip Care
The second wave of the pandemic made the provisioning of home care for palliative care patients in Delhi extremely difficult. In a desperate attempt to curtail the surge in infections, the city went into a complete lockdown along with innumerable other impositions being declared in the country’s National capital.
Homecare and Tele Medicine
Though challenging, we managed to continue provisioning our Nurse led palliative homecare services even though we could not maintain our usual scale of operations. Leveraging technology enabled us to extending consultations via Tele-medicine. The tele-medicine model allowed us to provide care for our patients and their families as we now had the opportunity to now meet them virtually. Once we assessed and diagnosed the patient and their family’s issues and concerns, and had gained a deep insight into their medical needs, we proceeded towards connecting them with the appropriate doctor. Post their virtual consultation with our doctors, arrangements were made to ensure that the necessary medications and related materials reached them immediately.
Training for Nurses
Organised over 33 sessions in a year
DNip Care has been able to consistently organize and conduct training programs for the nursing fraternity which also includes students from various Nursing Colleges spanning across the length and breadth of our Country. These sessions were conducted physically prior to the pandemic, and are now being offered virtually via online platforms since the pandemic began. We have also been able to conduct a series of 8 sessions between October 2020 and January 2021 for the Nursing community on ‘Promoting Excellence in Palliative Care Nursing’. An array of eminent National and International faculty extended their support to us in our mission to impart the nuances of Palliative Care to the very enthusiastic nurses from across the country. The course was well received and appreciated not only by the participants, but also received acclaim from respected and renowned authorities like The Indian Association of Palliative Care and The Indian Nursing Council by way of approvals and credit hours. Additionally, we hosted over 33 academic sessions on ‘Palliative Care – An update’ for nursing students from across the country, with support from several renowned faculties.
Service to Destitute Patients
We realized that a very vulnerable section of our society, the destitute patients who were placed in care homes must not be excluded and deprived of medical attention during the pandemic. We therefore developed a strategy to extend care to such people by organizing medical camps with the wholehearted and selfless support of several Doctors, Nurses, Psychologists, Social workers and Volunteers. We were mindful towards adhering to all the appropriate Covid safety behavior during these camps to ensure everyone’s safety was taken care of.
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