Auxiliary nurse midwife

Last updated

Auxiliary nurse midwife or nurse hybrids commonly known as ANM, is a village-level female health worker in India who is known as the first contact person between the community and the health services. [1] ANMs are regarded as the grass-roots workers in the health organisation pyramid. Their services are considered important to provide safe and effective care to village communities. The role may help communities achieve the targets of national health programmes. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Background

The Mukherjee Committee in 1966 prescribed a system of targets and incentives and identified ANMs and other village-level workers as agents for the popularization of the health programmes. In the 1950s and 1960s, training of ANMs mainly focused on midwifery and mother and child health.[ citation needed ]

In 1973, the Kartar Singh Committee of the Government of India combined the functions of the health services and changed the role of ANMs. [1] The committee recommended that there should be 1 ANM available per 10,000-12,000 people. [4]

In 1975, the Srivastava Committee recommended expansion in the role of ANM. Recommended expansion included the role of an ANM as a multipurpose health worker. Along with maternity care, the committee recommended that the ANM's work include child health (immunization) and primary curative care of villagers. The Indian Nursing Council (INC) accepted the recommendations of the committee and included them in the syllabus in 1977. This decision also reduced the training period of the ANM from 24 months to 18 months. [1]

In 1986, the National Education Policy gave the ANM programme a status of Vocational Education. Following this decision, the INC again reviewed its policy and recommended that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare make the ANM course vocational at +2 level (after 10th class/higher secondary level). However, only a few states of India have made the ANM course a vocational course at the higher secondary level of schooling. [1] According to the latest guidelines by INC, the minimum age for admission to an ANM course should be 17 years while the maximum age limit is 35 years. [5]

In 2005, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched, which focused on improvising primary health care in villages and further increased the importance of the ANM as a link between health services and the community. [1]

Role of the ANM

ANMs works at health sub-centres. The sub-centre is a small village-level institution that provides primary health care to the community. The sub-centre works under the Primary Health Centre (PHC). Each PHC usually has around six such sub-centres. Before the launch of the NRHM in 2005, there was provision of one ANM per sub-centre. Later it was found that one ANM was not adequate to fulfill the health care requirements of a village. In 2005 NRHM made provision of two ANMs (one permanent and one contractual) for each sub-centre. The ANM is usually selected from the local village to increase accountability.[ citation needed ]

As per the Rural Health Statistics Bulletin of 2010, there were 147,069 sub-centres functioning in India, which were increased to 152,326 in March 2014. As per recent norms, there should be one sub-centre for population of 5,000 while in tribal and hilly area population allotted for each sub-centre is 3,000. [1] [6] [7] [8]

Under NRHM, each sub-centre gets an untied fund of Rs 10,000 for expenditure. The ANM has a joint bank account with the Sarpanch (head) of the village to get such funds. ANMs use untied fund for buying items needed for sub-centre, such as blood pressure equipment, weighing machine, scales and for cleaning. The rate of deliveries at the sub-centre level has been increased since the grant of untied funds via NRHM. [1]

ANMs are expected to be multi-purpose health workers. ANM-related work includes maternal and child health along with family planning services, health and nutrition education, efforts for maintaining environmental sanitation, immunisation for the control of communicable diseases, treatment of minor injuries, and first aid in emergencies and disasters. [1]

In remote areas, such as hilly and tribal areas where transport facility is likely to be poor, ANMs are required to conduct home deliveries for women. [7]

Relationship with ASHA

The Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) is a community health worker. Depending on the area covered by the sub-centre, each ANM is supported by four or five ASHAs. ANMs are supposed to take weekly or fortnightly meeting with ASHAs to review work done the last week or fortnight. ANMs guides ASHAs on aspects of health care.[ citation needed ]

With the Anganwadi Worker (AWW), the ANM acts as a resource person for the training of ASHAs. The ANM motivates ASHAs to bring beneficiaries to the institution. The ASHA brings pregnant women to the ANM for check-ups. She also brings married couples to the ANM for counseling on the family planning. The ASHA brings children to immunisation sessions held by the ANM. The ASHA act as bridge between the ANM and the village. [1] [6] [7]

Related Research Articles

The primary health center or primary healthcare center (PHC) is the basic structural and functional unit of the public health services in developing countries. PHCs were established to provide accessible, affordable and available primary health care to people, in accordance with the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 by the member nations of the World Health Organization WHO.

District Nurses work manage care within the community and lead teams of community nurses and support workers. The role requires registered nurses to take a NMC approved specialist practitioner course. Duties generally include visiting house-bound patients and providing advice and care such as palliative care, wound management, catheter and continence care and medication support. Their work involves both follow-up care for recently discharged hospital inpatients and longer-term care for chronically ill patients who may be referred by many other services, as well as working collaboratively with general practitioners in preventing unnecessary or avoidable hospital admissions.

Nursing in the United Kingdom has a long history. The current form of nursing is often considered as beginning with Florence Nightingale who pioneered modern nursing. Nightingale initiated formal schools of nursing in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The role and perception of nursing has dramatically changed from that of a handmaiden to the doctor to professionals in their own right. There are over 700,000 nurses in the United Kingdom and they work in a variety of settings, such as hospitals, health centres, nursing homes, hospices, communities, military, prisons, and academia, with most working for the National Health Service (NHS). Nurses work across all demographics and requirements of the public: adults, children, mental health, and learning disability. Nurses work in a range of specialties from the broad areas of medicine, surgery, theatres, and investigative sciences such as imaging. Nurses also work in large areas of sub-specialities such as respiratory, diabetes, cancer, neurology, infectious diseases, liver, research, cardiac, women's health, sexual health, emergency and acute care, gastrointestinal, infection prevention and control, neuroscience, ophthalmic, pain and palliative, and rheumatology. Nurses often work in multi-disciplinary teams but increasingly are found working independently.

A health professional, healthcare professional, or healthcare worker is a provider of health care treatment and advice based on formal training and experience. The field includes those who work as a nurse, physician, physician assistant, registered dietitian, veterinarian, veterinary technician, optometrist, pharmacist, pharmacy technician, medical assistant, physical therapist, occupational therapist, dentist, midwife, psychologist, audiologist, or healthcare scientist, or who perform services in allied health professions. Experts in public health and community health are also health professionals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Carson Breckinridge</span> Founder of the American FNS (1881–1965)

Mary Carson Breckinridge was an American nurse midwife and the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service (FNS), which provided comprehensive family medical care to the mountain people of rural Kentucky. FNS served remote and impoverished areas off the road and rail system but accessible by horseback. She modeled her services on European practices and sought to professionalize American nurse-midwives to practice autonomously in homes and decentralized clinics. Although Breckinridge's work demonstrated efficacy by dramatically reducing infant and maternal mortality in Appalachia, at a comparatively low cost, her model of nurse-midwifery never took root in the United States.

ANM may refer to:

Mid-level practitioners, also called non-physician practitioners, advanced practice providers, or commonly mid-levels are health care providers who assess, diagnose, and treat patients but do not have formal education or certification as a physician. The scope of a mid-level practitioner varies greatly among countries and even among individual practitioners. Some mid-level practitioners work under the close supervision of a physician, while others function independently and have a scope of practice difficult to distinguish from a physician. The legal scope of practice for mid-level practitioners varies greatly among jurisdictions, with some having a restricted and well-defined scope, while others have a scope similar to that of a physician. Likewise, the training requirement for mid-level practitioners varies greatly between and within different certifications and licensures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian Nursing Council</span> Regulatory body for nurses and nurse education in India

Indian Nursing Council is a national regulatory body for nurses and nurse education in India. It is an autonomous body under the Government of India, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, constituted by the Central Government under section 3(1) of the Indian Nursing Council Act, 1947 of Indian parliament. According to the original act the function of the council is to provide "uniformity in nursing education".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nursing</span> Health care profession

Nursing is a profession within the healthcare sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses can be differentiated from other healthcare providers by their approach to patient care, training, and scope of practice. Nurses practice in many specialties with differing levels of prescription authority. Nurses comprise the largest component of most healthcare environments; but there is evidence of international shortages of qualified nurses. Nurses collaborate with other healthcare providers such as physicians, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, and psychologists. There is a distinction between nurses and nurse practitioners; in the U.S., the latter are nurses with a graduate degree in advanced practice nursing, and are permitted to prescribe medications unlike the former. They practice independently in a variety of settings in more than half of the United States. Since the postwar period, nurse education has undergone a process of diversification towards advanced and specialized credentials, and many of the traditional regulations and provider roles are changing.

Community-based monitoring (CBM) is a form of public oversight, ideally driven by local information needs and community values, to increase the accountability and quality of social services such as health, development aid, or to contribute to the management of natural resources. Within the CBM framework, members of a community affected by a social program or environmental change track this change and its local impacts, and generate demands, suggestions, critiques and data that they then act on, including by feeding back to the organization implementing the program or managing the environmental change. For a Toolkit on Community-Based Monitoring methodology with a focus on community oversight of infrastructure projects, see www.communitymonitoring.org. For a library of resources relating to community-based monitoring of tropical forests, see forestcompass.org/how/resources.

An Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) is a community health worker employed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) as a part of India's National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). The mission began in 2005; full implementation was targeted for 2012. The idea behind the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) was to connect marginalized communities to the health care system. The target was to have an "ASHA in every village" in India. In July 2013, the number of ASHAs was reported to be 870,089. In 2018, this number became 939,978. The ideal number of ASHAs envisaged was 1,022,265.

Nursing in India is the practice of providing care for patients, families, and communities in that nation to improve health and quality of life.

Nursing in Kenya began in 1908 and was conducted without a formal framework until 1950. Over the decades, with demand for healthcare providers increasing due to marked growth in the population of Kenya, training programs were implemented.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Health Mission</span> Public health initiative in India

The National Health Mission (NHM) was launched by the government of India in 2005 subsuming the National Rural Health Mission and National Urban Health Mission. It was further extended in March 2018, to continue until March 2020. It is headed by Mission Director and monitored by National Level Monitors appointed by the Government of India.Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the recently launched National Urban Health Mission (NUHM). Main program components include Health System Strengthening (RMNCH+A) in rural and urban areas- Reproductive-Maternal- Neonatal-Child and Adolescent Health, and Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases. NHM envisages achievement of universal access to equitable, affordable and quality health care services that are accountable and responsive to the needs of the people.

The public healthcare system in India evolved due to a number of influences since 1947, including British influence from the colonial period. The need for an efficient and effective public health system in India is large. Public health system across nations is a conglomeration of all organized activities that prevent disease, prolong life and promote health and efficiency of its people. Indian healthcare system has been historically dominated by provisioning of medical care and neglected public health. 11.9% of all maternal deaths and 18% of all infant mortality in the world occurs in India, ranking it the highest in the world. 36.6 out of 1000 children are dead by the time they reach the age of 5. 62% of children are immunized. Communicable disease is the cause of death for 53% of all deaths in India.

The Government of India has initiated several National Missions in order to achieve individual goals that together ensure the wellbeing of its citizens.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rajanikant Arole</span>

Rajnikant Shankarrao Arole was born in Supa in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, India on 10 July 1934, the second child of Shankar and Leelawati Salve Arole. His parents were both schoolteachers and his father became Inspector of Schools. The Aroles raised their three sons and four daughters in the faith of the Church of England, inculcating in them Christian ethical and spiritual values that have guided Rajnikant through a lifetime of public service.

The Twelfth Five Year plan for health services in India covering 2012-2017 was formulated based on the recommendation of a High Level Experts Group (HLEG) and other stakeholder consultations. The long-term objective of this strategy is to establish a system of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country. Key points include:

  1. Substantial expansion and strengthening of public sector health care system, freeing the vulnerable population from dependence on high cost and often unreachable private sector health care system.
  2. Health sector expenditure by central government and state government, both plan and non-plan, will have to be substantially increased by the twelfth five-year plan. It was increased from 0.94 per cent of GDP in tenth plan to 1.04 per cent in eleventh plan. The provision of clean drinking water and sanitation as one of the principal factors in control of diseases is well established from the history of industrialized countries and it should have high priority in health related resource allocation. The expenditure on health should increased to 2.5 per cent of GDP by the end of Twelfth Five Year Plan.
  3. Financial and managerial system will be redesigned to ensure efficient utilization of available resources and achieve better health outcome. Coordinated delivery of services within and across sectors, delegation matched with accountability, fostering a spirit of innovation are some of the measures proposed.
  4. Increasing the cooperation between private and public sector health care providers to achieve health goals. This will include contracting in of services for gap filling, and various forms of effectively regulated and managed Public-Private Partnership, while also ensuring that there is no compromise in terms of standards of delivery and that the incentive structure does not undermine health care objectives.
  5. The present Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) which provides cash less in-patient treatment through an insurance based system should be reformed to enable access to a continuum of comprehensive primary, secondary and tertiary care. In twelfth plan period entire Below Poverty Line (BPL) population will be covered through RSBY scheme. In planning health care structure for the future, it is desirable to move from a 'fee-for-service' mechanism, to address the issue of fragmentation of services that works to the detriment of preventive and primary care and also to reduce the scope of fraud and induced demand.
  6. In order to increase the availability of skilled human resources, a large expansion of medical schools, nursing colleges, and so on, is therefore necessary and public sector medical schools must play a major role in the process. Special effort will be made to expand medical education in states which are under-served. In addition, a massive effort will be made to recruit and train paramedical and community level health workers.
  7. The multiplicity of Central sector or Centrally Sponsored Schemes has constrained the flexibility of states to make need based plans or deploy their resources in the most efficient manner. The way forward is to focus on strengthening the pillars of the health system, so that it can prevent, detect and manage each of the unique challenges that different parts of the country face.
  8. A series of prescription drugs reforms, promotion of essential, generic medicine and making these universally available free of cost to all patients in public facilities as a part of the Essential Health Package will be a priority.
  9. Effective regulation in medical practice, public health, food and drugs is essential to safeguard people against risks and unethical practices. This is especially so given the information gaps in the health sector which make it difficult for individual to make reasoned choices.
  10. The health system in the Twelfth Plan will continue to have a mix of public and private service providers. The public sector health services need to be strengthened to deliver both public health related and clinical services. The public and private sectors also need to coordinate for the delivery of a continuum of care. A strong regulatory system would supervise the quality of services delivered. Standard treatment guidelines should form the basis of clinical care across public and private sectors, with the adequate monitoring by the regulatory bodies to improve the quality and control the cost of care,

The first case of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh was reported in Nellore on 12 March 2020. A 24-year-old who was confirmed positive for coronavirus. He had travel history to Italy. The Andhra Pradesh Health department has confirmed a total of 5,37,687 cases, including 4,702 deaths and 4,35,467 recoveries, as of 10 September. The virus has spread in 13 districts of the state, of which East Godavari has the highest number of cases.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur College of Nursing is a public funded institute administratively governed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. It is a constituent college of University of Delhi. The college ranked second in India for Nursing Education (2016).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Tnai Journal". Tnaionline.org. 2007-04-20. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
  2. Mavalankar, D.; Vora, K.; Prakasamma, M. (2008). "Achieving Millennium Development Goal 5: Is India serious?". Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 86 (4): 243–243A. hdl: 10665/270164 . PMC   2647422 . PMID   18438507.
  3. "An Auxiliary Nurse-Midwife in India Sets an Example for Family Planning". Jhpiego. Archived from the original on 2016-02-15. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
  4. S.L. Goel (1 January 2008). Rural Health Education. Deep & Deep Publications. pp. 9–. ISBN   978-81-8450-115-5.
  5. "Indian Nursing Council, Official Indian nursing council website, Government India, Establish Uniforms Standards, Training Nurses, Midwives, Health Visitors". Indiannursingcouncil.org. Archived from the original on 2019-10-22. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
  6. 1 2 "Rural Health Care System in India" (PDF). National Health Mission . Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  7. 1 2 3 "Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) Guidelines for Sub-Centres" (PDF). Government of India. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 7 January 2016.
  8. "HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE IN RURAL INDIA" (PDF). IIT, Kanpur. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 7 January 2016.

Bibliography