LAHORE - University of Health Sciences has made Basic Life Support an essential component of the curriculum of MBBS and BDS courses, main objective of the decision is to train medical and dental students in quickly responding to emergencies and saving the life, spokesman of UHS said on Monday.
“It has been made mandatory for all fourth year and final year MBBS, third and fourth year BDS as well as allied health sciences’ students to undergo Cardiac First Responder (CFR) as a basic life support course under the supervision of an instructor faculty, being developed by UHS in collaboration with Disaster Relief by Irish and Pakistani, Ireland, Institute of Learning Emergency Medicine, Ireland and Pre-hospital Emergency Care Council, Ireland”.
It further said each student on successful completion of the course would be awarded an international certificate jointly by UHS and Irish Institutes.
No medical or dental student would be allowed to appear in final year examination unless he/she has completed training and got certification in this essential course. There would be at least one station each of basic life support in the practical examination of medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology and pediatrics subjects of MBBS with effect from annual examination 2012, it added.
Inaugurating the first workshop on Monday, UHS Vice Chancellor Prof Malik Hussain Mubashar said patient’s immediate care was a field in medicine which needed to be standardised as most of lives were lost in first 10 ‘golden’ minutes of any emergency such as heart attacks, strokes, shock and trauma.
He further said that doctors still seemed to be expected to learn resuscitation skills in the clinical settings, when there was little opportunity to correct poor techniques. Once students became house officers, their time for training was limited.
“Basic first aid and resuscitation skills should be taught to all professional healthcare students as both patients and lay public have an inherent expectation they will know what to do in an emergency irrespective of the point they have reached in their training”, the UHS VC maintained.