By Matters India Reporter

Secunderabad, August 6, 2020: The premier healthcare organization of the Catholic Church in India has partnered with the University of Melbourne to roll out an online course for sister doctors.

The course titled “Communicating “COVID-19” is designed to help clinicians communicate with patients, caretakers and the community effectively regarding the current pandemic, Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI) director-general Father Mathew Abraham said in a press release.

The course, comprising eight tutorials, is organized thematically around four pillars: epidemiology, clinical science, ethics and society, and law.

Epidemiology course deals with measures and modeling in a pandemic, the rationale of social distancing and ‘flattening the curve’ and evaluating rapid clinical trials for proposed therapeutic agents.

Clinical science module includes virology, genomics, and laboratory testing of SARS-CoV-2 virus, prevention of Covid -19, risk factors for severe disease with Covid and management and outcomes of Covid.

Ethics and society would focus on clinical ethics in a pandemic, allocation of scarce resources, obligations and responsibilities of healthcare professionals in pandemic and coping strategies in uncertain times

Law concentrates on government public health interventions, service disruption in a pandemic and medico-legal indemnity in a pandemic.

The assessment is the submission of the eight tutorial unit self-assessments and case studies.

A Certificate of Completion is provided upon satisfactory completion of Communicating COVID-19.

Course completion requires approximately 8-10 hours of e-learning. Given the evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, tutorials will be released on a rolling basis. Content will be regularly and rigorously updated as new information and discoveries emerge.

Clinicians have the flexibility to study in their own time and location. Program materials can also be accessed using a web browser.

Associate Professor Rosemary McKenzie and Professor Rob Moodie of Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne are the course directors.

CHAI is also to start four online self-paced online courses for its members amid Covid 19 crisis, said Father Abraham.

The courses are Hospital Directors, Administrators and management team (7 hours), Nurses and allied healthcare providers (6 hours), Doctors (8 hours) and Community health providers (6 hours).

“These are self-paced courses that could be done at convenience and are divided into chapters and various units. Certificates to be issued to participants on the successful completion of the course,” said Father Abraham.

Apart from the online courses, CHAI organized a few webinars on how to prepare the hospitals for the COVID outbreak. A series of webinars on long-term sustainability were meant mostly for those who are in healthcare leadership of the network.

Eminent speakers from within and outside the CHAI network spoke on a range of topics to sensitize the leadership on innovation, sustainability and optimization, amid the COVID crisis. A summary of the webinars launched thus far include were financial sustainability of CHAI hospitals, telehealth solutions, smart procurement and leveraging data

The next webinar is scheduled on August 7 and the topic is the rollout of a self-paced online course, on the preparedness of healthcare providers to manage COVID-19. This is a joint initiative of CHAI, the Sister Doctors Forum of India (SDFI), Tata Trust and the Christian Medical College, Vellore, Vellore (Tamil Nadu), informed Father Abraham.

CHAI offers affordable, quality and compassionate healthcare, especially at the margins of the society, he said.

Today, CHAI has 3,520 member institutions — 1,409 dispensaries, 913 health centers, and 928 hospitals – with more than 50,000 beds. It also has 210 disability rehabilitation centers, and 90 holistic care centers for PLHIV (persons living with HIV).

Nuns, who work as doctors, nurses, or social workers, head as many as 92 percent of CHAI members. Nearly 84 percent of them serve in medically underserved areas.

CHAI has 11 regional units in India. Its members provide medical care to more than 21 million people in a year – with a team of 1,000 Sister-Doctors; 25,000 Sister-Nurses; 10,000 plus Sister-paraprofessionals.

It also has around 40,000 nuns and priests, who are social workers, and a huge number of lay employees.

Sister Mary Glowrey, an Australian and a member of the Congregation of the Society of Jesus Mary Joseph, founded CHAI in 1943. Over the past 78 years, it has grown into the world’s largest health care organization in the voluntary sector.

She came to Guntur, a town in southern India, in 1920 with a new vision and a definite mission. She founded the association with 15 sisters with the goal of providing curative care to people, especially to the poor, women and children.

Sister Glowrey, who died in Bangalore from cancer on May 5, 1957, at 69 years of age, is a Servant of God, the first stage in the canonization process.

During the first 14 years, nuns managed CHAI. As the association grew in strength, its vision got broadened. Promoting community health, CHAI began to see health as a basic human right.