Compassion and Care Continues.....

While the world is battling the unprecedented COVID 19, we at Indian hospitals have been preparing a set of new protocols to fight this pandemic. It has been a new experience for the medical fraternity and administrators as there has been no reference point in the past for the same. Hospitals and clinics quickly got in the COVID 19 preparedness and "yes most have them have pretty much implemented some robust protocols" to deal with not only COVID positive patients but also their routine OP and IP patients as well. Hospitals and clinics are now getting used to the new normal.

Survival of Fittest and Fastest

For all most all the healthcare providers it has been a matter of survival of fittest and fastest during these times. During the last couple of months since the lockdown began, hospitals have had complete zero OPD functioning and only the ER was functional, The capacities went southwards to as low as 20 percent in IPD and the OPD, thankfully since last few days has reached to 20 to 30 percent of its load. Its just imperative that the healthcare organizations have to learn to stay afloat in these difficult times.

Phantom Pain

For doctor owned clinics or hospitals, it was like a complete black hole and actually have rolled down their shutters. Most of them are not in a capacity to bear the overheads of the business. It was like a phantom pain not realizing where it is coming from. On the other hands we have known that some healthcare organization have started down sizing the staff and the consultants. There are instances where the staff and consultant’s salary were lowered temporarily to a certain percentage.

Raining Webinars

There was a social media onslaught of webinar promotions. There was an overload of scientific discussion on the internet platform and Zoom emerged as a winner in terms of the subscription base. With very little to do, the clinicians felt like going back to school while attending all the online CME’s and discussions. Hospitals and clinics took to the digital route for curating the leads and keeping them ready to get patients foot in the door the moment the lockdown end. Pharma sales executives and hospitals BD team had their packed schedules conducting online CME’s. We don’t see in the near future that there would a large congregation of medical fraternity and it is anybody’s guess what role will be the BD team playing in the hospitals.

Rolling the Dice

Thankfully for Indians, the inherited strong immunity, exposure to malaria, dengue, BCG vaccination and maybe less virulent of the virus load were the elements which have led to the lower numbers of mortality, This doesn’t mean that we are fully contained, but we need to live with it, it is like driving a car on the road without causing an accident.

While the medical consumers mind set is still to be unboxed, as for him/her, all elective surgeries or elective treatments tends to be deferred. Refer to Maslow’s hierarchy model where current priority is physiological and safety, while social, esteem and self-actualization is not at all on people’s mind.

The Smile Behind the Mask

One of the most compassionate way of treating the patient is with a smile which now the healthcare professional is not able to exhibit. A smile goes a long way in comforting an anxious patient ― bringing some brightness in these dark times, which is now hiding behind the mask. The doctor is not able to place his/her around the patients shoulder today which is a gesture of so much of comfort. The million-dollar question is how do we do that, HCO’s came up with innovations like putting a smiley tag around the neck or pasting a pic of theirs on the PPE’s to establish the connect. The pure form of social connect is surely missing and would comeback only the complete corona free era. While the world is battling the unprecedented COVID 19, we at Indian hospitals have been preparing a set of new protocols to fight this pandemic. It has been a new experience for the medical fraternity and administrators as there has been no reference point in the past for the same. Hospitals and clinics quickly got in the COVID 19 preparedness and yes most have them have pretty much implemented some robust protocols to deal with not only COVID positive patients but also their routine OP and IP patients as well. Hospitals and clinics are now getting used to the new normal.

Sudhaker Jadhav

The Author is Chief Operating Officer at Oasis Fertility.