Designed to give doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other healthcare professionals hands-on experience and simulation-based training, Berkeley HealthEdu, the learning solutions provider for the healthcare sector is trying to create a new definition for healthcare, informs Soumya Kanti Purkayastha, CEO, Berkeley HealthEDU in an interaction with Prathiba Raju
How is Berkeley HealthEdu different from traditional theory-based model of learning?
The Indian education system provides very good academic knowledge but a lot of hands-on training and practical skill development in health education are missed. Berkeley HealthEDU bridges this wide gap by offering courses for doctors, medical students, nurses and allied healthcare professionals which are scenario based and combine global best practices with actual clinical application, backed by research and evidence-based data. We give simulation-based training to the medical professionals. For example, we enable them to manage unexpected response of patients to anaesthesia in near real-life scenario and apply complex problem-solving skills, decision-making skills and teamwork behaviours.
Health education needs practical knowledge and evidence-based practice, as it upgrades the skills of healthcare professionals. For instance, in our country, nurses learn a lot after joining their job. But our custom-based courses with high fidelity simulation labs, where we create OT emergencies like golden-hour approach of an accident victim, equips them to learn about real-life patient scenarios and improve critical thinking and medical decision making in complex situations. All the content developed is contextualised and customised according to the Indian hospital environment.
What is your role in healthcare at home space?
Homecare employees are categorised in three groups – doctors, nurses and General Duty Assistants (GDA). GDAs usually get the certified course from the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and Berkeley is also a partner of health sector council of NSDC. Berkeley HealthEDU has customised two weeks’ courses for GDAs and nurses as these add value to their basic skills and take them to the next level of specialised skills making them ready for the industry. There is immense talent in the home care market and it is developing rapidly. The talent pool needs to be adequately skilled in order to be gainfully employed and we are adding value to the workforce by upgrading their skills. The healthcare sector is expected to drive the economic growth as well as play a significant role in generating employment and Berkeley HealthEDU is contributing significantly in the healthcare at home space.
Do Berkeley HealthEDU provide training to frontline workers like ASHA and ANMs?
The frontline workers like ASHA and ANMs is another important segment which we would like to focus upon. For this, we have been talking to various state governments.
As of now, under the National Health Mission (NHM), most of the state governments are into building the hospital infrastructure. I hope that once these are in place, Berkeley HealthEDU has a great opportunity and it could add great value to the ASHAs and ANMs who are the most important segment in the healthcare chain.
Right now, the Kerala government has invited us to put up a skill centre in Kochi which will be a PPP model, where they will give us the infrastructure and we will provide high-end skill training.
But in general, my vision for the state governments is to set up four or five skill labs in the different regions of the state, make it a five-year PPP model on a continuous basis and train batches of doctors, nurses, paramedics. We have already discussed this with various state governments and many of them have shown interest. Every state has its unique requirement but large-scale programme is a must for the North East as quality nurses and GDAs pass out from these areas.
Give us the details of the courses and workshops you conduct in a year?
We have a list of 40 to 50 multiple courses and the top 10 courses are very popular with which we train about 1,500 doctors or nurses per year. Altogether, we have trained about 5,000 healthcare professionals in the last three years. The trained professionals have impacted at least four to five million lives.
Our vision is to touch and impact 20 million lives by 2020. Currently, our focus is more on short-term courses which is long as six months. Our training sessions and workshops are held onsite at client locations or offsite at our highly advanced facilities in Delhi and Mumbai.
One of our popular programme is a 12-day infection control programme in hospitals for nurses. Each of these hospitals have two nurses to control infections. After the course, they go and practice and in three months they update on the activity and a plan for the next three months. After they complete six months, we review their performance and give them the certificate. All our programmes have a review. Our cost varies between Rs1,000 to Rs 40,000 and it completely depends on the programme a person chooses.
Do you think the Virtual Reality (VR) lab would be an apt fit for a country like India, which has low doctor to patient ratio? How can these labs help?
As of now, India is lagging behind in the usage of training facility in healthcare space. Even senior doctors who are trained in simulation, are finding it difficult to convince their hospital chains or others that it is the apt way of practical training. Moreover, a lot is spend towards infrastructure and equipment. So, many hospital chains are not keen in investing in the manpower skill development.
The other main cause is attrition. After they train the healthcare staffs, about 60 per cent tend to leave the job, but they don’t think about the remaining 40 per cent people who continue the service.
As for VR labs, we are in touch with various solution providers in the US. Perhaps, in the next three to five years, we will be coming up with some VR lab facility in India. There is not enough knowledge about how such healthcare training programme would help you to enhance level of skills and competencies required for professionals to work in this sector which would build goodwill of the hospital or the hospital chain.
Each state or city is working in silos but we need to create a national healthcare training platform where all the companies come together and educate the healthcare industry that such practical training and upgrading skills would be the next level of growth.
Are there any plans for partnership with the corporate sector?
We regularly have batches of doctors, junior doctors, nurses coming from big hospitals for training. A lot of our work is with greenfield hospitals, as they need more skilling assistance. In Rohtak, a US doctor couple wanted to set up a multi-speciality hospital and they approached us and we worked right from the recruitment to the training of hospital workers. So, Berkeley EDU gets 25 per cent of its business from such greenfield projects yearly. We are also trying to explore on providing trained manpower to the hospital who are industry ready, instead of hospitals recruiting and sending us for training.