The Mumbai Chapter of Indian Society of Anesthesiologists (ISACON) organised the World Anaesthesia Day (WAD) conference in Mumbai to update doctors and the medical fraternity on the advancements in modern anaesthetic technologies. They also discussed various issues faced by anaesthesiologists at hospitals and other facilities needed to make anaesthesia even safer for the patients. One of the most important points discussed at the conference was that patient awareness is very low and they do not understand the ramifications of this process in the surgical procedure that they are undergoing. Another point raised was that technologies in anaesthesia have ensured that patient trauma and mortality rates are at an all time low.
Commenting on the occasion Dr Hemant Shinde-Consultant Anaesthesiologist, Hinduja Hospital, Khar said, “Operation poses a huge challenge for the body’s physiology (or natural functioning) to cope. These rapid fluctuations and body’s natural responses including pain are the ones that the anaesthetist continuously monitors and treats as appropriately required. As a corollary to this, administering anaesthesia would be the natural job of the preoperative physician. This makes the job of the anaesthetist far more acute and challenging that requires a rapid response, sometimes within a few seconds.” “The rapid, spectacular and stunning progress in medicine is largely due to safe surgery. This in turn is largely due to enormous advancements in safe anaesthesia. Had it not been the perioperative physician aka anaesthetist and anaesthesia, the very foundation of modern medicine would have been weakened,” he concluded.
Dr Jitu Bapat, Consultant Anaesthesiologist,Hinduja Hospital, Mahim stated, “As it is commonly believed that doctors and hospitals have to take the moral and legal responsibility of mishaps, patients seldom give thought to the fact that some minor errors in disclosure or the belief that it does not matter could lead to some serious problems during the surgical process.”
In addition to the conference, the ISACON also launched their patient awareness campaign and released a patient information booklet that will be distributed free of cost at all hospitals. They also commissioned of a website www.modernanesthesia.in that is dedicated to the education and awareness of patients on all matters pertaining to anaesthesia.
Talking about the initiatives taken by ISACON, Dr Bapat said, “This initiative on patient education and awareness will go a long way in helping patients to not only understand the importance of the anaesthetic process but also ensure that they behave in a more responsible mannerduring the pre-surgery stage and take more responsibility on themselves to ensure that they undergo a safe and efficient surgery.”
