Saturday, September 10, 2011

Haematology and BMT services are at a turning point


Ludhiana, 10th September,  Haematology, Oncology and Bone marrow transplantation services are at a turning point in our country with increasing number of patients requiring the need for these services.  With a projected increase in chronic diseases in India and increasing life span, patients with these diseases are on the rise.
The caregiver at the bedside has a very important role in the outcome of cancer patients. On this behalf Christian Medical College, Ludhiana conducted a unique national conference for the nurses and physician assistants working in the field of cancer and bone marrow transplantation. This is the first time in this region such a conference is held on the theme ‘Importance of Nursing care’focusing on ‘Quality, Competency and Research’.
This was attended by more than 300 delegates from 10 different states of the country and 25 different institutions.
The meeting was inaugurated by the Chief guest Dr Kim.J.Mammen and Dr Kunal Jain gave the welcome speech.
While Mrs Abanti Gopan from Kolkota spoke about quality in nursing care, Ms Swapna Joshi from TMH Mumbai, detailed on how to go about research in nursing care and Dr M Joseph John from CMC Ludhiana mentioned clinician’s view point on nursing care and emphasized that Indian nurses can be as good or better than nurses from abroad by giving adequate training more responsibility.
Ms Jyoti Sahni from PGI, Chandigarh talked about the infection control in specialized units and Ms Joylen Jonahs from Pune explained the details of managing central lines.  Mrs Selva Titus from Vellore expounded on the importance of filtration technology in Haematology-Oncology and transplant units to reduce the incidence of infections.
Ms Anita Desouza from Mumbai gave the details of maintaining a clean environment for BMT and leukemia units and Ms Margaret from Vellore gave the details of stem cell handling. Ms Deepshika Gupta from Ludhiana mentioned about the ways to prevent and manage extravasations.
Post lunch there were panel discussions on training avenues for nurses and physician assistants, attrition among nurses, optimal manpower in a specialized unit and maintaining interpersonal relationships in a unit. This was followed by quiz for the audience and organizing secretary Dr M Joseph John gave the vote of thanks.

Friday, September 09, 2011

Asmita weekend theatre workshop on Saturday

The Asmita weekend theatre workshop, conceptualised by Mr Arvind Gaur Director Asmita theatre group, is the first of its kind. This workshop provides working professionals a platform to pursue theatre on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
The uniqunes of this workshop lies in the selection of its content, chosen to study contemporary acting. Socio-political issues become a subject of discussions, improvisations and script reading.Voice and speech work, quintessential in acting are taught by means of physical exercises, street plays and monolouges.
15 years of knowledge and experience of Asmita Theatre Group is carefully filtered into the minds of students by the senior most actors of Asmita, under the critical guidance of Mr. Arvind Gaur.
Finally the three month workshop culminates in a public production.
"Kharashe" a play based on short stories by Gulzar was performed by the second batch of Asmita Weekend Theatre Workshop at I.H.C on the 26th and 27th of july.A comprehensive documentation of this play is available at the Asmita Weekend Theatre Group on Facebook.

For More Details Contact: Shiv Chauhan-9958793683,Shilpi Marwaha-9540656537, Arvind Gaur-9899650509

8th Ophthalmic Quiz organized


Ludhiana, 9th September: The Department of Ophthalmology, Christian Medical College and Hospital successfully organized the 8th Ophthalmic quiz for undergraduate medical students in the hospital auditorium on 9th September 2011. The Chief Guest for the occasion was Dr.A.G.Thomas, Director, CMC & Hospital. He encouraged the participating teams and appreciated the efforts of the department in making this academic venture a much awaited annual feature of the institution.
Among the 30 undergraduate teams, 5 teams qualified for the quiz following the preliminary round. Dr.Nitin Batra and Dr.Gurvinder Kaur conducted the finals. Anjali B Susan and Anu Sara Philip (Batch of 2008) were the winner & Nayana Sebastian and Dona George (Batch of 2006) were the 1st runner up.
Dr.S.M.Bhatti, Principal CMC, was the guest of Honour and presented a special Award of Merit to an outstanding student, Geetika Gera (Batch of 2007). Gayatri Bhatia (Batch of 2008) presented an interesting talk titled ‘Hall of Fame’, which gave a brief history of legendary ophthalmologists.

Soldier Recalls Helping New York Citizens During 9/11


By Stephanie Hoff
1st Infantry Division
FORT RILEY, Kan., Sept. 7, 2011 – A decade ago, then-paramedic Peter Rosie was on his day off hanging around his apartment in New York City.
Click photo for screen-resolution image
Army Staff Sgt. Peter Rosie with the 1st Infantry Division pulls security duty during his unit's deployment to Iraq in 2009. Rosie had served as a civilian paramedic with the New York City Fire Department during 9/11. Courtesy photo   
Rosie was in his eighth year with the New York City Fire Department, where he served the residents of the Harlem community. A phone call from his girlfriend instructing him to turn on the television caused Rosie to spring into action.
"I saw the first plane hit [the North Tower] on the TV. We had a small TV so you couldn't make out the magnitude of it," Rosie recalled. "All I had to do was walk one flight to the roof, and then I saw the second [plane] hit in front of me. My first thought was, 'I better go to work.'"
Today Rosie is an Army staff sergeant serving here with the 1st Infantry Division’s 1st Battalion, 4th Cavalry Regiment. On Sept. 11, 2001, he experienced the horror of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.

Rosie is native of Scotland who’d previously served in the U.S. Army and later with the British Army before joining the New York City Fire Department. On 9/11, he hopped on his son's bicycle to report to Bellevue Hospital Center. Throughout the following
Weeks, the facility would be one of New York's busiest centers to treat the wounded and later assist with identifying the deceased.
Within 10 minutes Rosie was handed a two-way radio and assigned to a partner and an ambulance for assistance at the World Trade Center.
"They threw a radio at me and said 'Here's your partner' and we started going down [to the WTC]," he said. "All I knew was it was bad."
He would soon be a first-hand witness to the sheer magnitude and danger of the day's tragic events when his ambulance began to arrive on the scene just as the South Tower [the first of the two towers to collapse] began to fall and nearly struck his vehicle.
"We were driving into it as it was coming down. We're talking seconds,” he said “If we had been a little bit earlier -- goner. Then, it just went black."
Rosie recalled that the closer they traveled to what is now known as "ground zero," the harder it became to keep their bearings due to the amount of smoke and falling debris. The first patients he assisted included a police officer suffering from a heart attack and another person who’d lost a limb.
"It was that first transport that was the worst," he said. "We backed up into Bellevue and there's just a sea of scrubs, just people waiting.”
When Rosie returned to the site, the second tower had also collapsed and he recalled how first responders were still attempting to establish a command post and a means of communications between emergency personnel.
"By that point, no one knew what was going on,” he said. “We were hearing and getting all kinds of information. At one point we thought the Holland Tunnel was blown up."
Rosie recalls he functioned on “auto-pilot” the rest of the day and ensuing night, with numerous patient transports to the hospital and treating patients’ respiratory distress and eye injuries.
He recalled that smoke would continue to rise from the site for weeks and by then emergency crews had switched from rescue missions to recovery missions to retrieve the deceased from the debris.
For the following year when Rosie wasn't on his scheduled shift at the fire department, he would be found volunteering for recovery missions at ground zero.
"For the next year if I wasn't working at Harlem, then I was working down at ground zero," he said. "There was a lot of camaraderie. It was good, but tiring.”
There were 343 New York City firefighters who’d lost their lives on 9/11, Rosie said. His experiences during 9/11 in New York City caused Rosie to eventually rejoin the U.S. military.
"I knew that everything had changed,” Rosie said, “and I wanted to go back into the Army."
Unfortunately, Rosie’s age was working against him. He was over the Army's maximum enlistment age. However, as though fate granted his wish, the policy was temporarily changed. Rosie again donned a U.S. Army uniform after nearly 26 years.
"I guess they were getting hard up and taking old men," he chuckled. Four years later, Rosie finds himself assigned to the historic 'Big Red One' here, preparing to embark on his third deployment with the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.
"I thought I had bit off a little more than I could chew initially. But I persisted and I ended up doing real well," Rosie said of his success in achieving the rank of staff sergeant after returning to the Army as a specialist.
Rosie visited New York this July. The trip, he said, marked the first time he’d returned to the city since re-enlisting in the Army.
"I don't think about Sept. 11 too much,” he said. “I'm not sure if it's some sort of coping mechanism, but I think it's why I never went back to New York [before].” 
Related Sites:
Special Report: Remembering 9/11
First Infantry Division and Fort Riley

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Survivor Supports Families in Wake of 9/11


By Elaine Sanchez
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2011 - It's been a decade since American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, but Bonnie Carroll vividly recalls the aftermath.
Click photo for screen-resolution image
Bonnie Carroll, president of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, assisted family members of the fallen in the wake of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. TAPS provides resources and support to family members with a fallen military loved one. Courtesy photo 
As a family-support volunteer, she spent hours "listening and sharing" with families who were waiting to be notified about a missing loved one.Carroll, president of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, was among a team of volunteers who responded in the wake of the devastating terrorist attack that took 184 lives at the Pentagon.
That day "changed everything about the world in which we live," she said. "It gave every American an appreciation of those on the front line protecting freedom -- a renewed sense of appreciation."
Carroll was at home in Anchorage, Alaska, when the news broke about the terrorist attacks here and in New York, and she immediately felt compelled to help -- both as an Air Force reservist and as the president of TAPS. She had founded this organization to offer support to survivors of fallen military loved ones after her husband, Army Brig. Gen. Tom Carroll, died in an Army C-12 plane crash in 1992.
In her reserve capacity, she was assigned to the Pentagon's office of national security and emergency preparedness and had just wrapped up reserve duty there and returned home. But when she heard the news, she put on her uniform and was on the first plane out of Alaska.
Carroll put a call out to her TAPS peer mentors to come to Washington at their own expense to help. More than 200 responded in a "tremendous response," she said. She arranged to have them serve six to 10 at a time in weeklong shifts offering 24/7 support to family members in the Pentagon Family Assistance Center at Crystal City's Sheraton Hotel in Virginia.
The center opened the morning of Sept. 12 and remained open around the clock until Oct. 12, helping both Defense Department victims' families and families of the passengers aboard Flight 77. Along with TAPS volunteers, the center was staffed by military community and family policy specialists, plus thousands of volunteers.
"We had folks who were surviving family members there to just be a comfort, to sit and hold hands," Carroll said. "We had really, really tremendous people who stepped forward.
"It was just beautiful," she added. "So much healing took place in that little closed environment. So much love and care and support, and the bonds that were formed exist to this day."
To avoid burnout, Carroll scheduled the volunteers in one-week blocks so the peer mentors and survivor support team were "alert, fresh and ready," she said.
"A big part of the effort ... was providing tremendous care to those 500 families at center, but also care to our team members who also were survivors," she noted.
The organization also brought in grief and trauma experts from around the nation. "We were focused on getting the best, most appropriate support in place that would complement the support provided by the DOD," she said.
In time and as reports rolled in, Carroll said, the atmosphere of hope shifted into a time of solace and support.
Twice a day, she recalled, now-retired Army Gen. John A. Van Alstyne, then deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy, briefed the families and take their questions.
The general offered families a fact-based, sometimes graphic briefing, and on some days, asked everyone to stand up and sing "God Bless America," Carroll said. And then "he would remind everyone to breathe. People didn't realize they were holding their breath."
Carroll said the general often remarked, "Regardless of their job -- whether a contractor, DOD civilian or military member -- the day of their death, they were on duty for America."
Carroll vividly recalls the family members she met and their reactions in the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon.
She remembers standing in the hall with Pat Hogan, an Air Force doctor who lost her Army major husband in the Pentagon. They were talking, when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Erik K. Shinseki and his wife, Patricia, walked up.
Carroll said Hogan looked Shinseki in the eye -- just days after her husband had been killed -- and said, "I have no children; I have no husband. Nothing is holding me back. I want to transfer to the Army and I want to go to the front lines."
"I would have thought he would have patted her on the head and told her to take time to grieve," Carroll said, choking up. "But he said, 'You got it.'"
However, the Air Force chief of staff at the time, now-retired Gen. John P. Jumper, got wind of the conversation and asked her to stay in the Air Force. He said he'd send her with pararescue personnel to Afghanistan so she could serve as their doctor.
"She left soon after," Carroll said. "She's amazing."
Carroll also recalls the Hemingway family from Kansas, who lost their son, a father of two.
"They hung in there all day every day for six weeks," she said, "and then they were the last family to be told that nothing of their son could be identified. There was nothing found."
After six weeks, the support center closed down, Carroll said, but TAPS volunteers continued to support the families of the fallen -- the same mission that continues today. The organization's support includes peer-based emotional support, a 24/7 help line, support groups, seminars and one-on-one counseling.
In turn, many of the 9/11 surviving family members became staunch supporters of TAPS, she said. Lisa Dolan, whose Navy husband died in the Pentagon, started a therapy dog program for TAPS' Good Grief Camp, which offers support to children of fallen service members.
Another survivor, Joyce Johnson, who lost her husband, works for TAPS as part of the adult survivor support team, which reaches out to those with newly lost loved ones.
Their contributions speak to their resilience, she said, as well as the resilience of the nation.
This year marks a decade since the tragedy occurred, but Carroll said Americans are reminded of the attacks every day.
"Every time we go through airport security or see a flag-draped coffin on the front page of the paper, every time we hear about security concerns," she said, "we're reminded of where this journey began and the precious nature of our freedom and the fragile world in which we live."
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Related Sites:
Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

AN APPEAL for PEMA from LEH

Pema is 30-year old lady from Leh, Ladakh, with four children, who recently underwent a urinary bladder reconstruction operation in the Department of Urology, Christian Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana. She had a diseased urinary bladder which was small in capacity and could not store urine due to tuberculosis of the kidney and bladder. Her left kidney was also diseased and non-functioning due to tuberculosis. Her right kidney was also obstructed due to tuberculosis and this was also set right surgically.

Pema had urinary incontinence and she was always wet and stinking with the smell of urine. Her clothes were always wet due to dribbling of urine without her knowledge. It was an embarrassment for Pema to meet her friends & family, and she could not move out of her home. She then decided to come to CMCH for further treatment. Dr Kim Mammen, Professor & Head, Department of Urology, CMCH

, and his team of doctors and Nurses performed reconstruction of the urinary bladder using an intestinal segment and increased its capacity to store more volume of urine for curing her urinary incontinence. As she was recovering from this major surgical procedure, she developed weakness of all her four limbs due to tuberculosis affecting a portion of her brain, making her unable to walk and use her hands. She is on treatment for her TB and on rigorous physiotherapy and rehabilitation therapy to get the function of her limbs back to near normal. Doctors, Nurses and Physiotherapists at the CMCH are working very hard to get Mrs Pema back to normal. Her husband went back to Leh, Ladakh, to sell all the jewelry and household assets to bring some more money for Pema’s treatment. The hospital authorities have subsidized her treatment and given her a lot of financial assistance, writing off a significant portion of her escalating treatment bill.


Her total cost of treatment would come to Rs 2.5 Lakhs. Pema and her husband had come to CMCH from Leh with only Rs 30000.00

and nothing more. This was the maximum amount they could collect from contributions from their family and friends. Kind hearted philanthropists and well-wishers can help this poor and truly deserving lady by sending in their contribution to the Medical Superintendent, CMCH, by a crossed cheque in favor of “CMC Ludhiana Society” with PEMA’s name and C/O Urology Department mentioned at the back of the cheque, along with a covering letter. All contributions are exempt from income tax under Section 80 G of the Income Tax act. 


Dr Kim Mammen,

Professor & Head, Department of Urology,
Christian Medical College & Hospital,
Ludhiana-141008, Punjab.
Mobile: +91 9814034185.