The role of healthcare professionals is of utmost importance as they save our lives from deadly diseases or infections. One league of all, is the general duty assistant (GDA) staff that plays a key role in aiding the personal care activities, basic comforts for stay, cleaning of the equipment and above all ensuring the patients welfare. It is obtained generally by maintaining the hygiene and cleanliness of the patient, environment as well as GDA staff themselves. This hygiene practice definitely helps to lower the spread and incidence of infections in the hospital premises. Moreover, looking at the increasing incidence of antibiotic resistance (ABR), infection prevention & control practices at hospital level need to be improved and maintained. One way of achieving this is via. seminars, workshops on hygiene practices involving the GDA staff on a regular basis. Keeping this in mind, an initiative was undertaken by the PREVENT IT team to enlighten the GDA staff of Fortis hospital, Mohali on ABR, hand hygiene and general infection control practices. 

The event took place at the premises of Fortis hospital on 27th and 28th April 2022. The lecture was delivered in hindi and punjabi language as per the convenience of the target audience. In total 50 GDA staff were trained in two days. The basics of antibiotics, antibiotics resistance and its spread were explained by Dr. Kiranjeet Kaur, PREVENT IT coordinator, Chitkara University, Punjab. The session was kept interactive and scientific concepts were discussed using day to today examples. Further the practical scenario of infection prevention was taken care by Mr. Dharam, Clinical Instructor, Chitkara University, Punjab. He shared basic ways of infection prevention and control at hospitals as well as encouraged them to practice hand hygiene during the session. The demonstration of donning and doffing of personal protective equipment kit was done with the help of videos. The key idea of the session was to raise awareness about ABR and empower GDA staff with basic hygiene practices. further,  Ms. Sheila Kispotta, from Infection control team Fortis shared her experience and enlightened GDA staff with real scenarios. In the end, Dr. Anita Sharma, Lab Medicine, Fortis Hospital, Mohali encouraged and appreciated the PREVENT IT team to come up with such initiatives in future. She also added that such sessions can bring change in the behavior and understanding of the GDA staff to play their role in better ways. 

To access the agenda for the event, please click here!