“Fragility” – disability, poverty, mental health – understood not as a problem to “limit”, but as a resource which, managed through good practices, becomes the driving force for a new personalized and humanised assistance model. Based on this assumption, starting from the end of 2019, the San Camillo – Forlanini Hospital has launched the Tobias service (Operational Team for Individual Care Needs).
The multidisciplinary path
This is the first multidisciplinary course in a hospital in Lazio that offers people with intellectual or relational disabilities the opportunity to access useful and necessary diagnostic procedures to prevent and treat pathologies not directly related to the main disease they are suffering from. Integrated into the DAMA – Disabled advanced medical assistance – network born in Milan, the Tobia Service has allowed the taking charge, accompaniment, care and assistance of over 800 people with severe disabilities and often uncooperative.
Thanks to the Tobia Service, more than that has been provided 3000 specialist services, about 200 operations under deep sedation or general anesthesia – from blood sampling to dental work – contributing to the removal of barriers to access to health. An experience destined to expand to another 15 structures in Lazio, thanks to the adoption of regional guidelines and specific training courses for about 80 operators. To take stock today, San Camillo opened the doors of the Aula Magna Agazio Menniti for “Conversations 2023”, the first of a cycle of meetings dedicated to “fragility”.
The protagonists
Protagonists of the first date the Minister for Disabilities Alessandra Locatelli and Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI). Moderating the conversation was the director general of the hospital, Narciso Mostarda. «The Dama-Tobia path must be implemented. Lazio and Lombardy have activated operational protocols for the reception and assistance to the disabled in some hospitals, but experiences are patchy. We want to define Guidelines that can be applied at a national level», said the Minister for Disabilities Alessandra Locatelli. “Taking inspiration from those who are already implementing a good practice is essential to understand and implement a model that can also work in other territories”, concluded the Minister.
“The ‘Tobias’ have always been there, but in many cases they are avoided,” declared His Eminence Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi. «The intelligence of Servizio Tobia and DAMA was to put together different pieces, different skills, creating a system that allows everyone to give their best. Priority, competence and heart: three concepts that I think are the key to this system. The heart is the added value, which gives priority and competence the ability to answer patients’ questions. Questions which, if not answered, become a pain for those in need of care », Eminence of him underlined.
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“The relatives of people with frailties are clear on what we have to do, they have been telling us for years – said Narciso Mostarda, General Manager of the San Camillo-Forlanini Hospital -. Here at San Camillo we are creating a larger area for welcoming, listening and accompaniment. We will place it in the most noble space of the San Camillo, the Padiglione Piastre, which is located at the main entrance, where there are no architectural barriers. In the next few weeks it will welcome all the operators who permanently deal with public relations, the Tobia operators who deal with the acceptance of diversity, and also the psychological professionals capable of mediating, above all when it is necessary to understand what the patients do not they can tell us.”