SEVENTEEN doctors and nurses successfully completed a triage training course and were officially certified on Friday last at the New Amsterdam Regional Hospital.

Included among the persons trained are one doctor from the Orealla Health Centre and two nurses from the Fort Wellington and Mahaicony Cottage Hospital.

Triage training refers to the methods used to assess patient’s severity of injury or illness within a short time after arrival, assign priorities and transfer each patient to the appropriate place for treatment.

Speaking at a simple ceremony to hand over the certificates, National Emergency Medical Director of Emergency Services of the Georgetown Public Hospital, Dr Zulikar Bux, highlighted the importance of why and how it can lead to the delivery of effective and efficient healthcare.

“Triage is where patient care starts. It is before you enter the emergency department and most of the time what I found is that the system to sort patients according to the level of emergency is not the best so we have to have a systematical way of addressing it, you have to have protocols and policies that can guide staff to make the right decision.”

To this end, Dr. Bux explained, “One of the biggest challenges here is that the emergency department or emergency response system for the most part of Guyana is very primitive; it needs a lot of work and development and it is one of my goals to ensure that it’s done. I am happy that I can work with personnel from the administrative aspect of the New Amsterdam Hospital to ensure we can deliver this. The most important concept of emergency is team-based care, because one person cannot do it all, but if you work together as you would have learned in the triage training –If you work as a team you can get so much more done and it help to improve efficiency and effectiveness.”

The concept, which was started at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation several years ago and has seen positive results, on that note; Dr Bux said it is his hope that the same service is decentralised to the rest of the country and with the training offered at the NARH staff, it is a step in the right direction. “We want the same model where we have developed trained professionals in emergency medicine that is trained doctors, nurses, EMT that can have the basic concepts of emergency medicine well drilled into them, so when we have patients that are sick and need emergent care, everyone is prepared to address that.. .Our goal is to make sure everyone who works in the emergency setting at NARH will have the requisite training and certification on basic course skills for an emergency department.”
Before the end of the year, it is expected that a trained emergency specialist will be permanently placed at the NARH. Additionally, the hospital will also see the opening of an outpatient unit to better service the needs of persons seeking medical care at the institution. Recognising the need for such training, Chief Executive Officer, NARH Dr Samantha Kennedy when she took up service at the hospital in November 2018, she realised the monthly mortality rate was alarming; as such, she needed to find a way to decrease the numbers as their main goal is to save as many lives as possible.

“Fifty something persons died for the month of November; I said to myself that’s alarming, so I did an assessment to find out what’s the reason and discovered half of those patients died in the emergency room and I asked myself, what is it that we are missing and what could we do to decrease those numbers, so I set a goal and my goal was that we would have a 30% reduction in the death rate on a monthly basis…I am happy to report since we started these trainings from November 2018 to June 2019 that number reduced from fifty something to thirty something.”

She noted they will continue to work to ensure the reduce the number, as there is still about 40% coming from accident and emergency, but as they continue with the training it will be reduced further. She urged those trained to apply the knowledge and to know that everything you do in the application of that knowledge will contribute towards saving a life and that’s what we are all about– improving patients’ outcomes. Meanwhile, seven ambulance drivers from the New Amsterdam Hospital also received certification after successfully completing one- day training on basic first aid and emergency response.