HEROES ON CALL
Covid really taught everyone how to handle extreme challenges in a hospital setting. Even though as doctors we see many difficult conditions, Covid was entirely different and far more extreme than what any of us have seen. When the pandemic began, most of our PG students had to work in the Covid wards, handling infected patients daily. Initially, many were worried about their own health and wellbeing; or their families or landlords would be anxious
about the person getting infected in the ward. And so, residents had to balance their mental stress and anxiety with their duties as a doctor, and they rose to the challenge. All of them were trained in Covid protocols and given ample PPE kits. The schedule was made in a way that students would not work for more than four to six hours at a go in a PPE. At regular intervals, we had a hospital committee inspect and train Covid ward students on infectious disease safety. Fortunately, no hospital-borne infection was reported throughout the pandemic at AIIMS.
PG students were also deprived of practical training opportunities in their own speciality field as most patients coming in were for Covid, so we all learned how to switch online and give both theoretical and practical training online. At regular intervals, training and workshops were conducted for PG students and, as much as possible, exposure to practical experience was given to final-year students from disciplines which involved surgery.
Switching to digital learning has been a major shift for medical science. Some aspects of it still need to be taught offline. As the second wave subsides, we are now prioritising practical learning for our PG final-year students, since it is a three-year course. This is also a challenge—to ensure that our students get the necessary practical exposure in a short period of time.
PG students were the real frontline warriors of the hospital, one can never thank them enough. Teachers were consultants and we would be moving from ward to ward. It is the students who stayed constantly by the patients’ bedside. Almost all PG students were working in Covid care units. Some of them had to be freshly trained in Covid care as they were of different disciplines. It was common to find SOPs hanging in the Covid area for them, such as how to handle diabetes in a Covid patient and so on. These students not only put themselves at risk but were also learning new material to be able to provide critical medical care under the toughest of circumstances in the future.
—as told to Sonali Acharjee
“PG students had to balance their mental stress and their duties as doctors” — DR ANITA SAXENA, Dean of Academics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi “Keeping calm was important. It wasn’t always easy, especially when our own academic year was suffering because we could not have the practical exposure. However, we did learn to make the most of the situation” — DR SAKSHI SACHDEV, Paediatric cardiology, MD, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi