QMedCONNECT: NOV 2014

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: November 2014

Dear friends

November was a month of lectures – mostly in Mumbai and one in Agra at a preconference workshop of NAPCON 2014 (a conference for Chest Physicians). I appreciate the efforts of Dr Lalita Fernandes, Goa Medical College and Dr Angira Dasgupta of the BR Singh Hospital, Kolkata for their efforts in planning workshops to share knowledge that they gained from the MECOR workshops conducted by the American Thoracic Society. It is not easy, interest in learning about research is still not a priority in the medical profession. And this is even more true at conferences, when people prefer attending sessions that are more about clinical topics. There is an urgent need for research workshops to get all possible incentives, especially for the younger professionals. Only then will their interventions be more evidence based and importantly, they will then contribute back to Indian data.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Story:

Dr. Amitabh Sen – Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesia, Cardiac Division, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi, shares his story

Dr.Amitabh Sen

Dr Sen had attended our full day program organized by Amrita Institute, just after he finished his cardiac anesthesia post doctoral fellowship. He recently shared the good news about his manuscript being accepted by the Annals of Cardiac Anesthesia. He says:

“I had no idea about proper PubMed search, Cochrane reviews and Reference Managers till I did a workshop by QMed. The workshop really helped me to improve my research skills and the learning was of immense help while writing my manuscript. It has been accepted for publication in next issue of the Annals of Cardiac Anesthesia. I have also been working on two separate papers, one of which is near submission in a high impact journal. I do hope to get it through. I sincerely thank QMed for helping physicians and medical students in this country which is still lagging far behind in medical research”

What we did – November 2014

I) Talks on literature searching / referencing /citing at

• Dr M L Dhawale Memorial Homoeopathic Institute, Palghar – Nov 3

• Institute of Nursing Education, JJ Hospital, Mumbai – Nov 7

• Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai- for the Medicine Dept- Nov 17

• Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai – for the PSM Dept- Nov 18

• National Conference on Pulmonary Diseases (NAPCON) 2014 at Agra – Nov 20

• Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai – for the Anesthesiology Dept- Nov 26

• Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai – for the PSM Dept- Nov 27

• JJ College, Mumbai – Nov 27

QMed Participates

• SPJIMR
Vasumathi attended a workshop conducted by the Centre for Education in the Social Sector – a department of the SP Jain Institute of Management. The workshop was on “New strategies in NGO leadership”

• GlobalGiving Workshop
QMed raises funds through GlobalGiving – www.globalgiving.org/14455 – based in the USA. Lavanya who conducted the workshop shared with us how we could use the opportunity of a giving culture in the US in December (Christmas and the time to avail of year end tax exemption options) to raise funds. GlobalGiving will offer bonuses for NGOs that raise largest funds. Do share our link with doctors / medical residents in the US and ask them to donate!

• Theory of Change workshop
The Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy (CAP) organized a workshop on Theory of Change (TOC). It was conducted by Sheila Chanani, a monitoring and evaluation specialist. The workshop was on the importance TOC frameworks in developing monitoring and evaluation processes. The participants were given exercises to apply TOC in their organizational set-up to analyze its implementation. It is actually quite an intense exercise and needs a lot of critical thinking work for any organization to implement the TOC. However, Ms Sheila made it very clear that “organizations take months to draft and implement an effective TOC framework and this workshop only attempts to give an overview of the concept'”. She gave undivided attention to every group during exercises and helped them in ‘thinking through’ the process of TOC.

Activity Time! – Drafting QMed’s TOC

Theory of Change workshop