Training doctors to understand patients better -Governance Now

Training doctors to understand patients better

Delhi’s LNJP hospital to train its fresh batch of PG students how to improve communication skills to treat patients better.

Sonal Matharu | July 8, 2010

To improve the communication between the doctors and the patients, behavioral sciences classes will be conducted for the new batch of 150 post-graduate students joining the Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) who will be serving in the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital (LNJP). The students will be divided in groups of 20 to 25 and July 17 onwards, each group will undergo this training, the time period of which will be decided depending on the response from the doctors. Communication professionals will be hired to impart these skills to the doctors.

“We are introducing this training programme in our college so that the doctors can interact with the patients better and are able to provide them with all the required information about their treatment,” said Dr Amit Banerjee, medical superintendent, LNJP hospital, who himself is an alumina of MAMC and is the first ex-student to serve as MS in the hospital he took his training from.

Expressing concern over the hospital’s infrastructure, Banerjee added that a lot still needs to be done to make it more patient friendly. Signage in the hospital is needed so that people do not have to ask for directions. Also, tall buildings of the hospital need ramps.

“The tall buildings of the hospital have no ramps. Patients rely only on lifts. In case of a breakdown, we need ramps to avoid mishaps from occurring in the hospital,” he said.

He pointed out that patients coming to the hospital are usually accompanied by relatives. A waiting room in the hospital’s seven-storey surgical block has been constructed for the relatives of the patients. Besides these changes, the hospital is now maintaining a record of the drinking water supply and junk food is not sold in the canteen anymore.

LNJP hospital, which comes under the Delhi government, is located in central Delhi and attracts patients from all over the city. It also caters to patients coming from the neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana as the New Delhi station and Kashmere Gate bust stand, Delhi’s two major transit points, are located very close to the hospital. The hospital also sees patients coming from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan.

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