India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre in collaboration with AstraZeneca India launches a nurses’ upskilling in NCDs programme

India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre, a collaboration between the Swedish Trade Commissioner’s Office, AIIMS New Delhi and AIIMS Jodhpur, launched a specialized training programme for nurses to equip them with world-class practical knowhow required in managing diabetes. In the first training, 30 nurses from AIIIMS Jodhpur will be trained for 2 days.

India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre is created to address the healthcare challenges in the country through key pillars – technology, protocol & process and capability building. This is built under strategic guidance from the Government of India’s ministry of health and family welfare, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Government of Sweden’s ministry of health and social affairs and the Embassy of Sweden in India, and knowledge partners AstraZeneca and NASSCOM.

 In a phased manner, this capability program aims to upskill 5,000 nurses across the country in the next one year by converting the current modules into e-learning. The programme also aims to expand the current curriculum to other non- communicable diseases (NCD) areas including hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and oncology.

The modules of this program are carefully designed to enable nurses to deliver specialized care, essential support services and standardized counselling for patients living with these high incidence non-communicable diseases in India. “Nurses hold transformative power in tackling any disease. The primary idea behind this initiative is to create a framework that can enhance primary, secondary and tertiary care in India. The program we are launching deeply focuses on enriching our nurses with hands-on knowledge and specific skills required to practice and promote up-to-date patient centric care,” said Cecilia Oskarsson, Trade Commissioner of Sweden to India

 As per WHO, 1 in 4 Indians has a risk of dying from a non-communicable disease before they reach the age of 70 years. Dr. SanjeevMisra, director, AIIMS Jodhpur said, “Nurses are a vital layer of any healthcare ecosystem that is instrumental in achieving the health and development goals of a country. As a part of India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre, we are proud to have developed a scalable training programme that would help nurses to not only deliver safe essential health services but also influence and educate patients towards understanding and managing a non-communicable disease”.

 This programme is curated from resources available within the NCD domain following the National Programme for Prevention & Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases & Stroke (NPCDCS) guidelines. “Nurses in our country are an important touch point that can be leveraged to spread correct medical information to assess and manage these critical lifestyle diseases. Capacitating and upskilling nurses can prove to be a boon in ensuring the delivery of affordable, standardized and safe essential health care services,” said Dr. Anil Kukreja, VP medical affairs, AstraZeneca India.

The training programme is targeted to empower nurses to better recognize the risk factors, causes, pathophysiology, screening methods, diagnostic tests and management of diabetes mellitus, hypertension and other NCDs. They will also be able to advice patients and the community on the importance of early and regular screening and adoption of healthy lifestyle.

The initiative will run under the aegis and direction of an Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Prof Suresh K Sharma, Professor and Principal, College of Nursing, AIIMS, Jodhpur. The advisory committee is being formed comprising of key dignitaries from AIIMS Delhi, AIIMS Jodhpur, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), University College of Medical Sciences (UCMS), AstraZeneca India, and Business Sweden.