DR Santosh Kumari, a nurse at the PGI, has been selected for this year’s National Florence Nightingale Award. Working as Sister Grade I, Dr Santosh had earlier done an internationally acclaimed research on countering ‘urinary incontinence’, which has now been turned into a handbook. Dr Santosh will receive her award from President Pratibha Patil on May 12 at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Also a recipient of the prestigious Basanti Devi award for her best thesis for MSc Nursing and the ‘best nurse’ award in 1984-85 while functioning as a Sister Grade II, Dr Santosh did her PhD from the Department of Community Medicine at PGI in 2003-08.

“Her thesis has been appreciated and recognised internationally. The work has been adopted by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the Department of Urology, PGI, to effectively deal with urinary incontinence. The work has been given the shape of a handbook, which is in a very simple language, with easy illustrations that make the patients understand their problem and means to tackle it,” said a PGI spokesperson. The handbook is distributed free of cost among the patients.

Dr Santosh also imparts training to the patients with urinary incontinence and prolapse uterus in the Gynae-OPD regarding behavioural therapy, which helps in managing the patients conservatively.

The award carries Rs 50,000, a medal and a merit certificate.