ICU To Home-Rehabilitation Project For Patients At AIIMS-Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: AIIMS-Bhubaneswar has launched a unique project highlighting the benefits of home rehabilitation for patients who often encounter prolonged illness after treatment in the Intensive Care Units (ICU).

Patients face prolonged illness after recovering in the ICU in hospitals. Often the treatment that helps them to breathe is a hole in the neck – tracheostomy – that needs to stay for a long time. The prolonged hospital stay becomes difficult for the patient, the family and the health system.

A unique event highlighting 200 cases of home-rehabilitation of post-ICU tracheostomised patients over the last 2 years was organised by the AIIMS ICU Rehabilitation ( AIR) project team recently, AIIMS Bhubaneswar said in a release on Saturday.

The event named “200 and growing” witnessed health care workers, doctors, nurses, rehabilitated patients and their family members come together on one platform to share stories.

The motive was to increase awareness among the various stakeholders to widen the reach of such rehabilitation projects. The project team was introduced, and key parameters that ensure successful rehabilitation such as the AIR-mobile application, equipment banking, training at the bedside and home follow-up were discussed, it said.

Executive director, AIIMS-Bhubaneswar, Ashutosh Biswas congratulated the AIR team and the patient-family members for enabling home care of these patients. Prof. Biswas interacted directly with the patients and some of their families who shared their experiences.

Dr Dinabandhu Sahoo, Joint Director and Team Leader of National Health Mission Odisha, which has funded this Innovation Project, was the Guest of Honour. He spoke about the vision of the government and MD NHM to improve holistic health in the state. Family members with an extensive contribution towards the programme by motivating other families and patients were felicitated by the AIIMS-Bhubaneswar director. Some family members also donated some equipment to the project for other needy patients.

The principal Investigator of the project, Dr Swagata Tripathy, presented the journey of Project AIR till date, along with its futuristic goal to more than 150 members of the audience. The project team from various Departments- Anaesthesia and Critical Care, College of Nursing (CON), Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and participants, including both patients and their families, spoke about the benefits received and how they participated in the project along with health care workers.