Coming soon: Doctors at a school near you

Health-care firm ties up with private schools for setting up casualty units on campus to provide emergency medical care

Your child will soon have doctors and nurses, besides teachers, looking after him/her. If everything goes as per plan, private schools across the city will have their own casualty units on their premises. Trained nurses will be hired to supervise these units and handle any kind of emergency.

The first-of-its-kind initiative - Docterz At Schools - has been taken by The Pediatric Network to ensure treatment to schoolchildren within the golden hour. The Network also plans to start a helpline to assist medicos in schools in serious cases until the injured children are shifted to nearby hospitals.

The first ones
Three schools in Mumbai have already approved the proposal - Our Lady Of Good Counsel High School (Sion), Vidyaben D Gardi High School and Junior College And Dhanvallabh English High School (Mulund), and Friends Academy (Mulund) - and will be the first ones to set up the units. If officials from the Network are to be believed, 15 more schools are in the process of finalising the same.

"Emergency medicine is a crucial component of the health-care system. We are trying to start a 'state-of-the-art casualty room' in each school to efficiently handle a broad range of medical maladies, right from unexplained aches and pains to injuries and life-threatening conditions, like cardiac arrests and burns," Dr Atish Laddad, paediatrician and founding member of The Pediatric Network, told mid-day.

Ready for emergency
The Network will also arm schools with an emergency team that will comprise Pediatric Advanced Life Support-trained nurses on campus, and will also tie up with nearby paediatric hospitals, besides providing training to school staff. To oversee emergency responsiveness, a paediatrician will visit each school once a month.

"Many private schools have medicine rooms but lack basic infrastructure. So, we will redesign these to handle emergency cases. The units will have oxygen, bed, suction pump, emergency medicine, glucose meter and nebular machine along with other essential tools," said Dr Laddad.

And, the 24/7 helpline will provide guidance to the on-campus nurses in serious cases until the child is taken to a hospital. "Only the school will have access to the helpline, which will be managed by paediatricians," he added.

Schools react
Jecintha Kasab,
headmistress, Vidyaben D Gardi High School and Junior College
'We have been doing health check-ups for quite some time. But this approach will help in better management of high-risk students. They screen students with risk for physical and mental health issues, and specialists are able to further screen these students more effectively'

Shivani Balodi,
principal, Friends Academy
'We are always concerned about the safety of our children. They have put up very good infrastructure on the premises; everything is reported live to their team of paediatricians. The SOPs to manage small ailments as well as larger ones make the school more secure'

Fr Salvador D'Souza,
principal, Our Lady Of Good Counsel High School
'This is project has a problem-specific approach, which makes it special. This year, we ran a questionnaire amongst teachers provided by their [The Pediatric Network] team to identify high-risk students. We could shortlist children with psychological and mental health issues. Docterz At Schools provided a child psychiatrist to screen and manage these high-risk students'

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