Establish Home Hospice Training Center in India

by Binaytara Foundation

Project Report | Jun 12, 2018
Meeting the unmet need- one family at a time

By Tara Shah | Executive Director

We last reported that two hospice and palliative care nurses from Boise, Idaho travelled to Ujjain to provide training to the local nurses. Those nurses successfully completed their training, and now the hospice and palliative care team in Madhya Pradesh has been providing the much needed hospice and palliative care services to hundreds of terminally ill patients and their families. As of May 31, 2018, the team had already helped 159 patients live the last few months/weeks of their lives comfortably.

Palliative care involves pain relief but goes much further and deeper. It is defined by the World Health Organization as “…an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment of treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual.”

The burden of non-communicable diseases such as cancers, heart diseases, diabetes, and strokes is on the rise worldwide and this holds particularly true in India due to the country’s fractured infrastructure and healthcare services, low health literacy, healthcare provider shortage, and poor patient follow-ups. This only means that hundreds of thousands of people are in need of palliative care services in this country. But merely 1% of India's population currently has access to these services.

One of the barriers to accessing palliative care services in India is a major shortage of healthcare providers trained in palliative care. To work toward a long-term solution to this problem, palliative care training centers must be established, a workforce must be trained, and programs must be established. With your support and our continuous partnership with the local government, we will be able to bring hospice and palliative care services to the 73 million people of Madhya Pradesh, India.

Thank you for your support!

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Mar 14, 2018
Ten Nurses Train in Hospice and Palliative Care

By Bryli Blankenship | Assistant to the Executive Director

Valerie Loftin, RNCS, leads training.

This year started with a great amount of progress. Thanks to your support, and the support of the government of Madhya Pradesh, India, we have need able to serve 30 patients and their families in Ujjian, Madhya Pradesh this February.

As stated in our last report, we sent two nurses from Boise, Idaho to Ujjain District hospital to train the nursing staff in order for them to provide high quality hospice and palliative care services. Valerie Loftin, RNCS and Connie Alexander RNCM, BSN, clinical supervisors at Horizon Home Health and Hospice in Idaho, provided two weeks of hands on training to ten nurses at the hospital. Pain management was a large part of the training course, but they also focused on other end of life symptoms, such as anxiety, nausea, constipation, agitation, and grief.

Hospice and palliative care services were virtually non-existent in Madhya Pradesh, leaving too many patients to die in pain and discomfort. “Many people in this area are in need of this type of care and are forgotten about,” said Lofitn. “End of life symptom management is a must for cancer patients, for hospice and palliative care, keeping the patient comfortable and managing symptoms to ensure they have the highest quality of life for as long as they live is our goal.”

The next phase of this project will include training more physicians and other healthcare providers so that they will become the next generation of trainers, and will educate providers from other district hospitals throughout Madhya Pradesh. This will help to further the Binaytara Foundation’s goal of developing healthcare manpower in underserved areas of the world.

We hope you will join us in this effort, and help bring hospice and palliative care services to the 73 million people in Madhya Pradesh. Death is a part of life; together we can ensure no one dies in pain. Thank you for your support!

Training and observation.

Links:

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Dec 15, 2017
India Home Hospice: Training in the New Year

By Bryli Blankenship | Assistant to the Executive Director

As the year 2017 comes to a close, we would like to thank you for helping us provide hospice and palliative care services to forty four patients and their families in Ujjain, India. As we shared with you in our previous project reports, until about six months ago, no hospice and palliative care services were available to the terminally ill patients in this area. Through our partnership with the government of Madhya Pradesh, India, to establish hospice and palliative care services at Ujjain District Hospital, we are able to provide relief to many families.

As stated in previous reports, Dr. C. M. Tripathi completed his training in the USA in July, and then established the hospice and palliative care program in Ujjain upon his return. The next step in this project is to train nursing staff to better equip them to provide high quality hospice and palliative care services to those in need. A hospice and palliative care nurse from the USA will be traveling to Ujjain District Hospital, India in January 2018 to provide hands on training to the local nurses in their own setting.

The need for hospice and palliative services is tremendous in this state, as well as in most of the developing world. Dr. Tripathi and his team in Ujjain enrolled 17 patients in the past one month alone. Dr. Derrel Walker, a hospice and palliative care specialist in Boise, Idaho, will also be traveling to India in the Spring 2018 to train other physicians and healthcare providers. After the healthcare providers at Ujjain District Hospital are trained, they will serve as master trainers to provide training to healthcare providers from other district hospitals in Madhya Pradesh.The Binaytara Foundation’s goal is to develop the required health manpower in hospice and palliative care and to establish these programs in all 51 districts of Madhya Pradesh so that hospice and palliative care services will be available to the 73 million people living there.

We invite you to join us in this effort and help bring hospice and palliative care services to many families in need. We may not be able to stop death, but together, we can ensure that nobody dies in pain. Thank you for your support!

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