Celebrating emergency nurses in India

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Dear Editor:

Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI ) was born in India in April 2005 as a not-for-profit institute focused on improving prehospital and emergency care in India. The institute is not affiliated with any single hospital or institution.

Emergency Management has 3 phases: Sense, Reach, and Care. Inspired by your Association, we celebrated Emergency Nurses Day on October 13, 2005, and instituted the EMRI Emergency Nurses Award (EENA) to recognize nurses who demonstrated the following special attributes of “CARE” in emergencies:

We distributed 21 EENA awards in 5 cities in October 2005 (Figures 1 and 2). This award will be an annual event.

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• Figure 1. 

  Chief Guest Ms Sujatha Rao, Project Coordinator—Strategy and Performance Innovation Unit & Ex Officio, Principal Secretary—Health Medical and Family Welfare Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh, gives the EENA award to Sister Susamma Varghese from Tanvir Hospital, Hyderabad. Looking on is Mr Venkat Changavalli, Chief Executive Officer of EMRI.

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• Figure 2. 

  From left: Guest speaker Mrs Srilatha from PATH, Mr Venkat Changavalli, Chief Executive Officer, EMRI, Chief Guest Ms Sujatha Rao, along with the recipients of the EENA Award—Sister Susamma Varghese; Ms K. Shanthi from Durgabai Deshmukh Hospital & Research Center; Brother Rojan James from Care Hospital, Nampally; and Mrs B. Debora from Government Niloufer Hospital.

We also have instituted Selfless Heroism in Emergency (SHE) awards to recognize citizens who have demonstrated special efforts in emergencies (eg, accidents, crimes, rapes, life-threatening health conditions, and fire) to save lives by being selfless, displaying heroism, going beyond their roles, risking their own lives, being instrumental and resourceful, alerting appropriate authorities, and/or dialing 108 (the emergency line).

Since August 15 in the city of Hyderabad and since September in Tirupati, Vizag, Vijayawada, and Warangal (with a total population of 10 million), victims of emergencies who dial 108 now have a better emergency response system with 30 state-of-the-art ambulances and 30 first responders.