Two districts show Tamil Nadu how it’s done – Times of India – Chennai Telegram

CHENNAI: Amid rising discontentment among doctors treating Covid-19 patients in different parts of the state about the inadequate facilities they have, the ‘Madurai Model’ has been providing relative comfort to the medical teams in the isolation wards of the Government Rajaji Hospital.
Sample this. If personal protective equipment (PPE) is given only to doctors in isolation wards and outpatient wings in Chennai and elsewhere, at the GRH it is supplied to all staff. This means that doctors, nurses and sanitary workers in the ICU, labour, emergency wards and operation theatres have been getting PPEs for a month now. Earlier they were given gown-type PPEs, which they found compromising on safety as it was open at the neck. Now they have started using full-suited PPEs provided by the government.

Tamil Nadu Government Doctors Association (TNGDA) president Dr K Senthil says they foresaw the situation before the lockdown started and prepared for it in advance. Unlike eighthour shifts in other places, the GRH staff work in six-hour shifts at the isolation wards. The reduced working hours helped prevent the period of exposure and viral load.
The doctors have a five-day week while nurses and paramedics work for seven days. They are subsequently put up at Tamil Nadu Hotel for 14 days in individual rooms. They are tested for Covid-19 on the seventh day of quarantine and allowed to go home after completing 14 days in isolation.
While the doctors, paramedics and nurses are made to stay in the two facilities of the Tamil Nadu hotel, sanitary staff also follow the same protocol where they have to stay in the rooms in the new GRH building, are provided the same food and 14-day quarantine. They are allowed to use their mobiles and laptops during this period to keep in touch with their families, from whom they stay away for a period of 21 days. “Only the doctors in one specific shift get to meet each other during the entire 21 days,” says Dr Dr M Manohar, who completed his duty in the first batch.
Dr Senthil says they were able to start sourcing PPE from wellwishers and donors even before the government started providing it to them. The GRH has over 2,500 medical staff including 1,000 doctors which meant that they could prepare duty rosters of four shifts a day with 30 staff in each.
Collector Dr T G Vinay, a doctorturned bureaucrat, is being credited with taking some key decisions. “He took an important decision to open the new postgraduates hotel, which is yet to be inaugurated, for accommodating the doctors during their duty period,’’ said GRH dean Dr J Sangumani.
Only emergency cases are entertained at GRH with the result that the 3,000-bedded hospital now has only 350 inpatients, nearly 100 of them OG cases. They have pooled the many operation theatres into two sections.
Vinay said protecting the medical staff and their welfare had been their priority when the crisis started, as it was through them that the crisis had to be handled.
The Trichy district administration has taken up a similar protocol from Monday. It has reserved 40 rooms in six hotels in the city to accommodate the doctors and nurses in isolation for a week during their duty at the isolation ward for Covid-19 patients. “They have been staying in the hotel rooms starting Monday,” Trichy collector S Sivarasu told TOI.