Mobile unit helps PG medicos

Tirupati: With an array of instruments at their workstations, a group of doctors begin a gentle procedure on the replica of human spine. Paying rapt attention to the instructions, the doctors tap the cross-section delicately, honing their skills related to neurosurgery. This is a typical scene at the 'Mobile Skill Institute', a CSR initiative by reputed medical devices maker Johnson & Johnson Medical India.

It will have all training facilities in a Volvo bus that tours various places across the country. It has already toured some parts of Northern India and in Southern part it entered Andhra Pradesh first. So far, they have provided training to PG Doctors at KGH hospital in Visakhapatnam in the last week of July followed by Kakinada, Vijayawada and Guntur. The mobile training facility has reached SV Medical College (SVMC) in Tirupati on Saturday and will be here till August 7.

The facility imparts training on basic techniques in suturing, knotting, laparoscopy, skin stapling, neuro, knee arthroplasty and spinal procedures. At a time 20 doctors can take training and each session will have 3-4 hours duration, said a representative of Johnson & Johnson. This will help the young doctors to get familiar with various surgeries, which they cannot experiment, on patients.

To get this type of hands on training, students have to go other major cities and spend huge amount of money. With the Institute on Wheels they can learn various latest techniques free of cost with practical orientation that may require for them in dealing various cases and in their campus only. However, the facility is strictly confined to the PG Doctors of Government Medical Colleges only.

A PG student of General Surgery department in SVMC Dr GS Padmanabham who attended the training programme for more than three hours expressed happiness. “It was a great initiative. We were trained on several things. For instance, closing and opening of abdomen (laparotomy) was explained.

There is a difference in suturing on the outside and inside. We learnt how to make knots inside after opening the abdomen”, he explained. For every concept they first explain it through a video and then provide practical training which will be extremely useful especially for those in the first year of PG.

In fact, several government medical colleges are not having such type of advanced medical equipment to provide hands on surgery training to the students of either graduate or undergraduate level. With this Institute on Wheels provides them to get an opportunity to better understand the concepts in surgery. In Tirupati, about 180 upcoming surgeons may get trained at this facility.

The vehicle will move to Kadapa from Tirupati and later to Kurnool and Hyderabad. SV Medical College Principal Dr NV Ramanaiah and several other doctors also visited the vehicle, which PG students of SVMC, SVIMS and BIRRD can utilise during its stay here.