Course for doctors ‘can cut death rates’

With nearly five million Indians dying due to medical negligence every year, experts claim that a specialised course for doctors and hospital staff focusing on how a critically ill or injured patient should be handled could bring down the figure by almost 50 per cent.

Developed in the early 1980s in Europe, the Acute Critical Care Course (ACCC) has come as a boon for medical institutions abroad by reducing the death rate of patients by nearly 10 per cent, even in serious health complications including sepsis, said Ajay Sharma, a transplant specialist and consultant at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in the UK.

The two-day course has become mandatory for surgical trainees both in the US and the UK, which annually lose over 400,000 and 98,000 patients respectively due to medical errors, Sharma said.

A study by the Harvard University last year showed that nearly five million deaths occur in India annually due to medical errors triggered by lack of practical knowledge among the doctors and nurses on how to handle patients when brought to the hospital.

Critical care

The ACCC aims to train the medicine specialists and surgeons of various specialisations such as surgical, gynaecology, orthopaedics and emergency to identify patients at a risk of deterioration, Sharma said.

He said “implementing the course in Indian hospitals, especially in the rural areas, can bring down the mortality rates due to medical negligence by nearly 50 per cent.”

The comprehensive course includes imparting training to the new and experienced doctors of a hospital receiving critical care patients.

Sharma and his team have trained medical specialists at various Indian hospitals in ACCC since 2012.

However, ACCC has not spread far and wide, with only 450 doctors across the country completing the course, experts said.