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| NSI Trainings |
| Anesthesia Assistants |
 In order to successfully perform an operation, a diverse team of health care workers must work in close cooperation. Without someone trained to administer anesthesia, an operation may not be possible - and this is the condition in many hospitals in Nepal.
One approach to the problem would be to wait for the national supply of anesthesia doctors to increase sufficiently for some go out to rural areas. However, when one considers that even in Kathmandu there is a scarcity of anesthesia doctors, this approach seems overly optimistic. Many countries around the world have taken a different tack: training nurses and mid-level health workers to become anesthesia assistants (AA). In Nepal, we have seen this cadre of workers become so skilled that even some large hospitals have come to rely upon them for most of their operations.
As a formal course in Nepal, the government's Bir Hospital first started this training in the mid-1990s. Paul Foster of INF Pokhara refined the Anesthesia Assistant Training (AAT) course and got government approval for it in 2002. Since then, 50 workers have graduated from the 6-month course, most of them trained in Patan and Tansen Hospitals. In 1994, DFID funded a formal assessment of the training and found that the trainees performed at an appropriately skilled level in their own district settings. When assessed in 2005, more than 90% of the AAT trainees trained at Patan Hospital over the previous 3 years were still working outside the Kathmandu valley.
Nepal's Health Ministry has established that at least 100 more anesthesia assistants must be trained to satisfy the demand in government hospitals alone. Private hospitals have also discovered their value and are asking for this training for their staff. Unfortunately, at this time only two hospitals are capable of giving this training at a quality level. NSI is collaborating with both of these hospitals and is working to add other hospitals to the AAT training network.
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Facts About the Training
| Entry |
Health Assistants, staff nurses |
| Length |
6 months |
| Place |
Hospitals with high numbers of operations |
| Skills acquired |
Able to administer basic anesthesia, under the supervision of the operating doctor, including spinal anesthesia |
| Relevance |
Allows a remote hospital to perform operations
These may be life-saving, such as an emergency Caesarian section |
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