How Does a COVID Hospital Work? FIT Takes You Inside Patna AIIMS

How Does a COVID Hospital Work? FIT Takes You Inside Patna AIIMS

Inside a COVID hospital: FIT takes you inside AIIMS Patna

Camerapersons: Dr Kranti Bhavna & Dr Sudeep Kumar

Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam

What happens inside a COVID hospital? Doctors in Personal Protective Equipment, ICUs, isolation wards and triage areas. Doctors from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Patna take FIT inside the hospital, that has been turned into a COVID facility.

Here's how it works:

The team of 342 doctors and 425 nurses have been divided into five teams and they work in a rotational roster.

Team A: Runs flu clinic

Team B: Takes care of stable suspected patients

Team C: Responsible for corona suspected & corona positive sick patients

TEAM D: Responsible for Lab confirmed corona positive cases

TEAM E: Responsible for death management

Even at AIIMS Patna, that handles hundreds of patients daily, before stepping into COVID duties the seasoned healthcare practitioners had to undergo special training. The training involved how to take samples for testing and donning and doffing the PPEs and how to protect themselves while treating the patients.

Dr CM Singh, Medical Superintendent, AIIMS Patna"When the first death happened in our hospital, there was lot of panic among the staff. We had to tackle that fear through counselling and lot of inter-personal communication. After that they felt much more confident while dealing with COVID positive patients."

Also Read: This is How a PPE or Personal Protective Equipment Kit Works

A COVID hospital works on the principle of separation and segregation. Not just the rooms, there are even designated lifts for corona patients and COVID duty staff. Three separate lifts are used for corona patients, clean linen and bio-medical waste respectively.

Since this is an unprecedented health crisis, a lot of temporary and stop gap arrangements had to be made. The radiology conference room has been converted into the COVID pharmacy. Here the healthcare professionals change into scrubs and issue PPEs. Since resources are limited, a record is kept of daily supply and consumption.

The emergency department has been converted into the flu clinic. This is the screening area where patients are screened for initial symptoms. Suspected cases are then shifted to isolation wards.

AIIMS Patna started COVID operations with 150 normal beds and 10 ICU beds.

Also Read: Rash, Sweat, Bruises: Wearing PPE for Hours Causing Skin Infection