“Pragya”, a new home for honing health sciences skill sets, was inaugurated at Parul University for advanced skills & simulations in healthcare

It is crucial and fundamental to continuously skill, re-skill and up-skill, says honourable Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi and in the field of healthcare, skilling becomes even more imperative as it involves dealing with human lives. Aligning with this vision, Parul University has taken a giant leap in establishing a state-of-the-art, one-of-a-kind skilling centre, “Pragya”, an advanced skills & simulation centre. This leading skilling facility was recently inaugurated through the hands of Dr Manoj Agarwal, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Health, Govt of Gujarat, to further the centre’s objective of imparting and enhancing the most crucial lifesaving skills, procedural skills, diagnostic and critical decision-making skills to thousands of undergraduate and postgraduate medical, paramedical and nursing students of the University.

Paul University’s Pragya provides a physical model of critical simulation and pre-hospital training that includes all the necessary elements of hospitals, including a fully-stocked Operating room, a Surgical Unit, a functioning Intensive Care Unit, a Triage and Emergency Unit, an ECHO and Cardiac Diagnostics Unit, a Critical Care Simulation Unit, a Trauma Simulation Unit, an Advanced Obstetrics Unit, a Neonatal Unit, along with Task Training areas. In addition to the hospital set-up, a range of basic task trainers and manikins have been put in place to ensure advanced simulations globally for learning patient treatment.

With more than 8,000 of the University’s students studying in the health sciences courses across various levels, the undergraduate students will undergo basic medical-surgical skills training, life support training and emergency management training. Students pursuing their internship and postgraduate residency will undergo training sessions in advanced cardiac life support, advanced trauma support and many other specialized trainings like ventilatory management training and patient case scenario-based training. The nursing and paramedical students will also go on to additionally receive training on injection techniques, suturing techniques etc. This centre's purpose aligns with the University’s vision toward shaping the nation’s future healthcare professionals and experts across multiple fields.

The University has also put in place adequate resources to commence full-time postgraduate diploma and certificate programmes at this centre. “What we see, we remember, what we do, we understand”, said Dr Geetika Madan Patel, Medical Director at Parul University. “This centre is like an entire hospital in itself because we want to ensure that the health sciences students enter into clinical areas of the hospital with great confidence and proper pre-hospital exposure. We have divided the centre into three broad areas: the advanced simulation areas, including critical care simulation areas, trauma simulation areas, and surgical simulation areas; the second task trainers’ areas for teaching basic procedural skills; the third, the different hospital sections. We will ensure the entire range of skills and simulation-based training will be possible at one place with proper and organized execution,” she added.