New Delhi: India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre, a collaboration between the Swedish Trade Commissioner’s Office, AIIMS New Delhi and AIIMS Jodhpur, launched ‘Skill For Scale’, an e-learning initiative designed to equip nurses with hands-on practical knowledge and skills to practice latest patient care for managing non-communicable diseases. This programme is certified by AIIMS Jodhpur and is endorsed by Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) will allow nurses from across the country to register for free, learn at their own pace.
In its first phase, the programme is focusing on diabetes management prevention and awareness based on a world-class comprehensive curriculum created from diverse resources available within the NCD domain following the NPCDCS guidelines. This programme content and modules are created by the team of experts from AIIMS Jodhpur and an advisory board with representation from AIIMS Delhi, ICMR, DGHS, Indian Nursing Council (INC) and AstraZeneca. These modules will equip nurses to provide standardised and quality counselling, care and support services to the people to prevent and manage diabetes. Subsequently, these trainings will be extended to other areas of NCDs in the subsequent phases like hypertension, cardiovascular and oncology.
With a multi-phased approach, the Skill for Scale programme is aimed to upskill 5000 nurses across the country within this year by converting the current theoretical and practical modules into easy interactive e-learning techniques. Explaining the need of such an upskilling programme Dr Sanjeev Misra, Director, AIIMS Jodhpur said, “Through this initiative, we are trying to bridge the knowledge gap that exists at the point of care for patients. The curriculum of this programme is carefully designed to enable nurses to deliver specialised care, essential support services and standardised counselling for patients living with an increasing incidence of non-communicable diseases in India”.
This e-learning mobile compatible programme is pegged at two levels-basic and advanced and includes a training of 20-24 hours to be completed at your own pace. The course can be completed in a span of two months further to which each student will be awarded a completion certificate and can avail CME credits via Indian Nursing Council.
“Skill for Scale programme is in line with our continuous efforts and commitments to address the growing burden of NCDs on our healthcare systems. The Government’s recognition of this programme will go a long way to deliver accurate health information and ensure safe essential health services,” said Dr Anil Kukreja, VP Medical Affairs and Regulatory, AstraZeneca India
By the end of the training nurses will be able to recognise risk factors, causes, pathophysiology, screening methods, diagnostic tests and management of diabetes. They will gain an understanding to initiate timely action for confirmatory diagnosis and appropriate treatment, make timely referrals of complicated cases, follow standard treatment protocols, counsel and interact on the importance of early screening of diabetes, educate community on adoption of healthy lifestyle and assist them to overcome barriers, myths and misconceptions.
Explaining on the importance of industry support on critical healthcare programmes, Cecilia Oskarsson, Swedish Trade Commissioner to India said, “ISHIC was created to address the healthcare challenges in the country through key pillars – technology, protocol & process and capability building. We are deeply encouraged to see the support these programmes have garnered from the government, key industry organisations which is absolutely crucial to be able to implement such programme at a national level and encourage wider use to be able to deliver benefits to the end patient and create an impact on the burden of healthcare. We will continue to evolve these programmes to be able to bring about holistic benefit to patients in their journey of managing non-communicable diseases”.
The initiative will be implemented under the direction of an Advisory Committee led by Prof Suresh K Sharma, Professor & Principal, College of Nursing, AIIMS Jodhpur. The advisory committee comprises of key dignitaries from AIIMS Delhi, AIIMS Jodhpur, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Indian Nursing Council (INC), AstraZeneca India, and Business Sweden. This committee will be responsible to outline and review of the entire schedule of interventions, governing the overall framework, planning and on-ground conduct of the initiative, continuous evaluation of the project and development of a model for possible replication across the country.
