QMedCONNECT Sep 2017: Learn more about Structured abstracts

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: September 2017

Dear Readers

I am often asked why QMed is a not-for-profit organization. And why we cannot charge our target audience for what we do for them.

QMed is a change making non-profit and not one which works for the poor and marginalized. QMed is making a change in one niche area of medical education and research.

We train students (and teachers and practitioners) of health science disciplines to correctly and systematically search online for all their research needs. We also train them to reference correctly. These techniques are not taught in their curriculum.

To do this we need funds. All the money we need cannot be raised by charging our target audience for the training we do. And so we either need grants or we need to collect the money that we need, by crowdfunding. Why not grants - you may ask. The reality is that grant givers do not seem to fully understand the kind of work we do. We are dealing with a "They don't know what they don't know" syndrome! Changing their thoughts itself is a change. Do read more in an earlier blog post of mine.

And - on the note of crowdfunding, on the occasion of Daan Utsav this week, we are raising funds to do workshops and mentoring for Postgraduate Students. Donations in multiples of Rs. 500 are most welcome! We wish to raise Rs 4.5 lakhs and have raised Rs. 1.25 lakhs so far. Please click here to donate. If you donate this week, we may get some bonuses!

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Did You Know

Structured Abstracts - Some Interesting Learning

Structured abstracts are abstracts that have clear sections, and not just a full paragraph (as abstracts of the past used to be). These kind of abstracts first evolved in 1987. The IMRAD format is the most common structure for a structured abstract, but other formats are also used. Why did structured abstracts emerge? It made reading an abstract easier. It possibly made the writing of structured abstracts better, because the authors had a basis on which they would summarize their research article's contents. This also made it better for health professionals searching the literature in selecting clinically relevant and methodologically valid journal articles. In PubMed, there is an additional step that makes things easier. If you wish to find structured abstracts on any topic, to the search strategy, just add AND hasstructuredabstract
Example - Asthma/drug therapy[mesh] AND hasstructuredabstract

To learn more about structured abstracts, do check out the following pages, from which we have summarized the above.
Structured Abstracts - What are structured abstracts? - We recommend spending some time reading each of the reference items at the end. The last item is a reference to a poster
Performance comparison of MEDLINE structured abstracts to unstructured abstracts - which mentions that they used the "Medical Text Indexer"(MTI) to compare structured and unstructured abstracts and found that structured abstracts are better for several purposes. The MTI, incidentally is a software application that helps indexers by parsing journal titles, abstracts and articles and suggesting Mesh terms for indexing.

Interesting Reading

Tullu M, Karande S. Writing a model research paper: A roadmap. Journal of Postgraduate Medicine. 2017;63 (3):143-146. Full text

Writing for projects, theses and for journals is something every health professionals has to do throughout one's career (or definitely once during the postgraduate study)! Many students and professionals find writing a little daunting because they need to plunge into it, without being able to absorb some of the basics. This editorial in JPGM focuses introduces all angles of research writing right from authorship criteria to formatting of final tables. And offers useful tips for prospective authors to get their research papers published in eminent peer-reviewed journals with a greater success rate. Well referenced, it guides a reader to more papers and important resources on medical writing. Written with the Indian medicos (and most likely all developing countries) in mind, it is a concise resource guide and starting point for those who need to write publications. A much needed editorial about writing good research papers.

From QMed's Calendar

Talks on Literature Search / Referencing & Citing at

• MUHS, Nashik- Sept 6

• Maharshi Dayanand College- Sept 9

• Smt. Kashibai Navale Medical College and General Hospital-Sept 12

• YMT Ayurvedic Medical College and Hospital- Sept 14

• Bharati Vidyapeeth Dental College- Sept 22

• Vasantrao Pawar Medical College - Sept 23

Guest lecture

• Vasumathi Sriganesh gave a talk on "Online resources in social sciences " at the research methodology workshop, organized by Maharshi Dayanand College of Arts, commerce and science on the 9th of Sept. The event was held for M.Phil. & Ph.D. scholars and attended by about 30 scholars. The lecture focused on principles of literature searching and provided brief details about specialized resources in different disciplines.

Special lecture

• Vasumathi Sriganesh delivered a two hour lecture at the Smt. Kashibai Navale Medical College and General Hospital on September 12. What was special about this? The invitation came from the UG Student Research Forum - a team dedicated to promoting research activities amongst undergraduate medical students and sensitising/educating them about research. Some of them had attended our workshop through Quest and took the initiative to have a lecture at their institution. In no time at all they got the event organized, and had a whopping audience of 130 UG students! Subsequently the organizing team reported that they had many inquiries from students about how they could do small research projects. That was indeed encouraging! The organizing team - Aditya, Dyuti and friends add that they could not do this without the support of the SRF Faculty, Dr. P.S. Chawla - Head Community Medicine Dept, Dr. R.S. Bangal - Dean and Dr. A.V. Bhore - Medical Director. We at QMed are also very grateful for the support of the faculty and authorities!

Workshops

• 100 PGs Workshop # 10 - We conducted this for two PG students on the 17th of September

QMed Participates

• Workshop on GST by the Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy - 13 Sep 2017. The workshop helped NGOs to understand what GST would mean to them.

• Workshop on Fundraising, organized by GlobalGiving USA - 19 Sep 2017. This was a fun event. Vasumathi got to meet Paige Creigh from GG USA - someone we only have known through emails. Paige and her colleague from India - Kavita Mathew together helped NGO participants plan out well for fundraising activities and also explained nuances of the GlobalGiving website.