PATHANAMTHITTA: Families with a bedridden patient at home share a common problem: Finding a trustworthy, trained home nurse who can care for their loved one while being easy on the pocket.Realising the difficulty such families face, Kadampanad grama panchayat in Pathanamthitta has decided to form a team of villagers who would be trained in providing palliative care at affordable rates. The team will be modelled on the lines of Haritha Karma Sena.
“Working members of a family, especially the young ones, face difficulty in caring for their elders properly if the latter become bedridden. So, they look for a home nurse. Every day, we get calls enquiring about the availability of familiar and trustworthy home nurses,” said panchayat president Priyanka Prathap, the brain behind the initiative. “However, it is not easy to get such persons in village areas at affordable rates. So, we came up with the initiative,” she said.
Priyanka said steps have been taken for the project’s implementation. “It will be done on pilot basis. Based on its outcome, we will expand the team and extend its services,” she said.
Home nurse: Kudumbashree implementing agency
Priyanka said the panchayat has 17 wards.” We will select 30 to 35 volunteers, all women, for the first team. In the first phase, priority will be given to people having experience in palliative care. We will train them with the help of doctors, nurses and the existing palliative care team of the panchayat. The volunteers will be taken to houses having bedridden patients and trained in ways to assist them. After they successfully complete the training, we will give them a registration number and ID cards and include them in the grama panchayat team,” she said.
Kudumbashree will be the implementing agency and those requiring the services of home nurses can approach it. It will send home nurses who suit the families’ needs. Remuneration for the home nurses will be fixed soon. “The grama panchayat will continue the training programme for home nurses and keep monitoring them,” Priyanka said.
She said the home nurses will be from the grama panchayat itself and so, will be familiar to residents. “The project will provide employment to our women. The remuneration will not be high like what private agencies charge. Poor families with bedridden patients will be provided concessions and home nurses serving them will be remunerated with the help of sponsors,” said Priya.