General objectives of the function:

The Patient Support counselor works directly with the patients and their families in order to offer psychosocial support and counseling regarding HCV infection, course of disease and the way forward, respecting the confidentiality and appropriate ethics; keeps record of sessions and updates database.

Key responsibilities include:

• Inform rapid test positive and PCR Negative people about their status.
• Provide complete counseling package related to HCV including PCR results, disease course and treatment plans and the prognosis.
• Provide psycho-social support to HCV patients through counseling and also provide information about the referral points.
• Monitoring, evaluation and reporting of monthly data

Specific Duties:

• Provide psycho-social support through counseling
• Provide psychological support/counseling to patients through individual and family counseling related to HCV PCR results.
• Provide preventive counseling package to PCR negative people including counselling about possible risk factors related to HCV and ways to reduce to reduce the spread of infection.
• Provide complete counseling package to all HCV positive patients related to PCR results, treatment initiation
• Identify chronic hepatitis C patients with psychological needs and help them linkage to care with institute for the management.
• Contribute and support medical team in identifying health needs of people effected by natural disasters.
• Mental Health Promotion sessions though the specific material on the topics in collaboration with Health Promotion team
• Collaborate closely with medical teams and HP team: mental health awareness, discussion of problematic cases, mutual referrals (including externals).

Monitoring, evaluation and reporting

• Use patient files for each counseling sessions respecting confidentiality
• Update the database regularly and monitor data
• Write the monthly reports regularly for Patient Support activities including department highlights, constraints faced and mitigations.

Back Up

The employee may be required to perform other tasks, take on other responsibilities, and work in other locations, depending on the needs of the project, including during the holidays of the employees with similar jobs. Employee may be required to do internal trainings for other team members related to Psychosocial well being.