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29 April 2020 | Story Andre Damons | Photo Supplied
Intubation training on a manikin (Doctors from Department of Anaesthesiology).
The Department of Anaesthesiology at the University of the Free State, in collaboration with the Clinical Simulation and Skills Unit, has trained almost 500 hospital staff members dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic since the lockdown started.

The unit assisted doctors, nurses, and staff working at the Universitas and Pelonomi hospitals with training in the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), including protective clothing, masks, gloves, aprons, and eye protection. The training started the week of 16 March and was led by Prof Gillian Lamacraft, Head of the Pain Control Unit in the Department of Anaesthesiology, and registrars in the Department of Anaesthesiology. Training was not only limited to healthcare workers in hospital wards designated for COVID-19-positive or suspected COVID-19 patients, but workers throughout the hospital received training, lest they be required to care for COVID-19-positive patients in the future, especially if there is an increase in the cases being treated in the hospital.

Training members of the anaesthesia department
According to Prof Lamacraft, the training was initially started to ensure that members of the anaesthesia department would be protected if the need arose for them to wear PPE while treating a COVID-19 patient. Members of the anaesthesia department are not routinely involved in the medical care of patients with serious infectious disease (e.g. Ebola virus), and because they were not previously required to wear PPE regularly, they are not familiar with its use. 
“Internationally, the healthcare workers most exposed to the virus appear to be the ones most at risk of dying, presumably owing to the greater viral load they receive. COVID-19 patients who are severely ill, may require intubation so they can be ventilated – this procedure puts the doctor performing it very close to the airway of the patient, and greatly at risk of being contaminated with COVID 19 during this procedure.” 

“Failure to intubate the patient successfully can lead to the rapid demise of the patient, so it has been decided as hospital policy that anaesthetists will preferably be the doctors performing these intubations, if they are available, as they are considered the doctors best at this procedure. Therefore, anaesthetists will be a group of doctors in the hospital at great risk of COVID virus exposure,” says Prof Lamacraft.

Training other healthcare workers
To facilitate this training, registrars in the Department of Anaesthesiology made videos to demonstrate the donning (putting on) and doffing (taking off) procedure for PPE. Members of the Universitas Academic Hospital’s Infection Control Team provided them with the required information and assessed the training videos for correctness.

The department used the Clinical Simulation and Skills Unit’s facilities at the university to conduct this training, so that the participants could also physically practise putting on and taking off the PPE after watching the videos. 

“Since then, we have been doing this training every working day. Having trained our department, the members of the COVID-19 task team for the Universitas Hospital asked us to train other healthcare workers at the hospital. Accordingly, we have trained many other healthcare workers (over 430 for PPE training alone), including heads of department, professors of medicine, specialists, registrars, medical officers, interns, all ranks of nursing staff, clinical technologists, and household aids.”

The different types of PPE
Prof Lamacraft says it is important that all these healthcare workers are taught the different types of PPE (i.e. standard and aerosol-generating procedure PPE (AGP PPE). In particular, they had to understand that a special type of mask, an N95 mask, should only be used for AGP PPE, as these are in extremely short supply internationally. 

“Many healthcare workers did not know how to put these on correctly, or which size to wear – this had the potential for wastage of this precious commodity. Taking off PPE contaminated with the COVID-19 virus is a very risky procedure. Failure to do so correctly, can lead to not only the healthcare worker contaminating themselves (e.g. by touching their eyes or face while taking off their masks), but also to the contamination of the healthcare workers assisting the person in taking off their PPE; or even to the participant taking home the virus on their bodies and contaminating their family at home. Therefore, the healthcare workers had to be shown how to take off their PPE without contaminating themselves.”
In order to reduce the risk of trainers and other participants being infected during training by healthcare workers who are asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19, only two to four participants have been trained at a time and strict rules were kept regarding social distancing and the use of hand sanitiser.

The training is essential to protect healthcare workers
Prof Mathys Labuschagne, Head: Clinical Simulation and Skills Unit, says volunteering doctors and nurses are also trained to work in ICUs with COVID-19 patients. The ICU department trained these volunteers in the use of ventilators, to assist with putting up drips and lines, intubation, and PPE. The goal is to train healthcare providers to assist in ICU when needed. 

“This training is essential to train and prepare healthcare workers when the patient numbers are increasing. The training is also essential to protect the healthcare workers against infection, because we need them to stay healthy to be able to manage the patients,” according to Prof Labuschagne.

Dr Edwin Turton from the Department of Anaesthesiology says the training is for frontline healthcare workers (nurses, cleaners, porters, doctors, and even washers from theatre) who need to protect themselves in order to protect their patients and all other staff helping them to care for the patients.

“Doctors and nurses need different forms or levels of PPE for working in the clinical environment, and we need them to train to wear appropriate PPE for AGP and contact with PUI and positive patients. They need to be able to protect themselves. The training is for all healthcare workers and not only for doctors and nurses,” says Dr Turton.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) training - donning and doffing
Personal protective equipment (PPE) training - donning and doffing
PPE training donning
PPE training donning
Intubation training for doctors of the Department of Anaesthesiology
Intubation training for doctors of the Department of Anaesthesiology
Ventilator training for nursing staff.
Ventilator training for nursing staff.
: Intubation training on a manikin (Doctors from Department of Anaesthesiology)
: Intubation training on a manikin (Doctors from Department of Anaesthesiology)
PPE training
PPE training

News Archive

Address by the first Inaugural President of the Central SRC
2005-08-03


 

The UFS Central SRC

Address by the first Inaugural President of the Central SRC of the University of the Free State, Mr Tello Motloung on Wednesday 3 August 2003

The Chairperson of the UFS Council, Judge Faan Hancke,
The Vice-chancellor and Rector of the UFS, Prof Frederick Fourie
The Vice-Rector Student Affairs of the UFS, Dr Ezekiel Moraka
The Presidents of the main campus SRC and the Vista campus SRC
Colleagues in the Central SRC, campus SRCs, students and fellow South Africans

Please receive my heartfelt revolutionary greetings

Vice-chancellor and rector what I bring here with me assisted by facts, is just the work of my imagination. Like a love letter addressed to a sweetheart miles away, even though you do not know how she feels, what she wants to hear, and do not even know what she looks like.

I value speech as just an honest intimation, that’s why I got into a habit of establishing a dialogue with people, looking at each other’s face, and persuading one another of what we are saying.

Vice-chancellor, today marks an important milestone in the history of the existence of the UFS. Today reflects the confidence and trust that students of the UFS have placed in us. They are confident that the Central SRC has both the will and the capacity to take our university forward as we confront the challenge of transformation.

Students are confident that they are correct to trust the Central SRC as the principal agent of change in our university that is genuinely committed to the objective of building a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic university. We need to frankly ask ourselves, as CSRC members, whether are we up to all these challenges?

All Central SRC members have to understand this fully, internalize it, and ensure that everything we do, does not betray the confidence and trust of students, or disappoint their expectations. I say this knowing that all Central SRC members have committed themselves to serve the students of the UFS, black and white, and no one among us (CSRC) needs any special lectures about this central commitment.

The UFS should be an omnibus, welcoming everybody on board. But we should be a bus with a clear direction. We will certainly lose our way if we, as an institution, don’t have a clear road map spelling out where we are heading to.

There should be clear guidelines on the role of students in the transformation process. Students should also be viewed as role players in transformation along with the University management, and not just opposing forces. There is no right time, other than this one, to move away from the politics of opposition to politics of transformation.

However, we need the support of management to do so. The University should value the role and contribution of student leaders, hear our legitimate claims and consider them as part of political and policy decision making.
     
Vice-chancellor and Rector, it remains our task to ensure that the UFS is transformed into an institution that is seen to be playing a vigilant role in developing students academically, intellectually, socially, culturally, politically and otherwise. The process of transformation is not ending tonight, it is just beginning tonight.

Judge Hancke, Prof Fourie, Dr Moraka, fellow students and fellow South Africans, I lead students at this university with a sense of pride and duty, and I know very well that I lead men and women, students who are all determined that we reach our destination safely and on time.

A navy divided within its ranks will be destroyed and vanquished by the enemy, but the navy united in purpose and action, loyalty and commitment will not sink but sail on to victory.

It is befitting to mention that every drop of my blood is telling me that the UFS is my home. I firstly became a student here, I became the SRC treasurer in my first year here, I became the deputy president here, and I became the first president of the Central SRC of the UFS.

Therefore you should never doubt my commitment towards the transformation of this university. To paraphrase what was said by students at another institution, “If there is no UFS in heaven, then I am not going.”

Let me conclude by thanking my ancestors for teaching me that even if I wined and dined with kings and queens, I am not a king myself, so I should not turn my back on people who made me what I am today.

Most importantly, I would like to thank the Almighty God and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for giving me time and power to lead this university.

It will be theoretically irresponsible if I ended my speech without indicating that “Only a Kovsie knows the feeling”.

I thank you.

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