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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · J Neurosci Rural Pract 2021; 12(02): 329-334
DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1722842
Original Article

Capacity Building in Mental Health for Bihar: Overview of the 1-Year Blended Training Program for Nonspecialist Medical Officers

Bhavya K Bairy
1   NIMHANS Digital Academy, Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
,
Aurobind Ganesh
1   NIMHANS Digital Academy, Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
,
Sandeepa Kaur
1   NIMHANS Digital Academy, Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
,
Prabhat Kumar Chand
1   NIMHANS Digital Academy, Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
,
Channaveerachari Naveen Kumar
2   Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
,
Narayana Manjunatha
2   Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
,
Suresh Bada Math
2   Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
,
Narendra Kumar Sinha
3   Department of Health, Government of Bihar, Patna, Bihar, India
,
Sanjeev Arora
4   University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
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Abstract

Objective The aim of this study is to give an experiential overview of a 1-year blended training program for nonspecialist medical officers (primary care doctors; PCDs) of Bihar State of India. The training program was aimed to enable PCDs identify, diagnose, and treat commonly presenting psychiatric disorders in primary care

Methods PCDs had a brief onsite orientation program to psychiatric practice at National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS), followed by 10 months of online blended training. The online program followed the NIMHANS Virtual Knowledge- Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) model, that is, a hub and spokes model of training

Results Twenty-two PCDs participated in this program. Eleven of them got accredited at the end. The onsite orientation consisted of exposure to various psychiatry facilities at NIMHANS, in addition to learning psychiatric history taking and mental status examination. The ECHO model of online learning consisted of fortnightly sessions, lasting 2 hours each. There were 20 such sessions. Each session consisted of a didactic lecture by the psychiatrist followed by a case discussion. The cases were presented by PCDs, moderated by the hub specialists (NIMHANS). At the end of the training, participants rated an average of 4.5/5 on the mode, content and relevance of training and increase in knowledge due to the training. Around 23,000 patients were cared for during the said 1 year by the trained PCDs.

Conclusion Training PCDs in a manner that enables retaining the learnt skills is feasible. However, rigorous evaluation protocols are needed in order to test this in a systematic fashion.

Keywords

Bihar DMHP - primary care doctors - capacity building - Project ECHO - mental health


Publication History

Article published online:
23 April 2021

© 2021. Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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