QMedCONNECT: SEPT 2014

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: September 2014

Dear friends

Here is our September update. I was fortunate to meet Dr Nagesh Simha from Bangalore, who visited Mumbai. He is a surgeon by training, but has hung up the surgeon’s scrubs and now dedicates his time to Karunashraya – a palliative care centre which he set-up. He also teaches communication skills in the context of palliative care and is active in the Indian Association of Palliative Care, as its President! Dr Simha requested for QMed’s involvement in helping Karunashraya and we do hope we can do something substantial for them.

This month also saw the event MECOR, – a Research workshop conducted by the American Thoracic Society in developing countries including India. Held in Delhi this year, there were about 25 participants from various parts of India, going through different levels of the workshop. I was invited to teach them literature searching and also to guide them with their specific topics. What I loved was the coordinator inviting me by mentioning “We cannot think of doing this workshop without you”! Most faculty were from the United States and there was one each from Brazil, Canada and India (apart from me). Every one of them had a special word for my lecture and its importance in the whole workshop. I was really touched.

The big event for September was the Cochrane Colloquium held in Hyderabad. It was the first time it was held in India and was a great success. It is difficult to describe a Cochrane Colloquium, because it has so much happening! And everything is about evidence in healthcare decisions and policy making. From broad topic plenaries to workshops, posters and in depth discussion sessions, sharing of innovative initiatives like one that identifies trial with a crowd-sourcing activity, or one that reduces the work of mining information, it is an intellectual delight. Thank you to the South Asian Cochrane Network & Centre, Vellore and all other Network Site heads who helped make this event possible in India. From QMed, Lakshmi and I attended the Colloquium, networked a lot and learned a lot!.

From QMed, it is an additional special thanks to Jackie Chandler, Methods Coordinator of the Cochrane Network, her colleagues and Dr Prathap Tharyan of the SACN for giving us a space in a stall to raise funds and talk about our work. A further big thank you for giving me a couple of minutes at a Plenary Session to let everyone know about QMed’s work. This was all very special for QMed and we do hope that this visibility will help us do lots more in the Cochrane and evidence space.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Story: ‘An undergrad medical student – and I already have a research publication in PubMed”!

Bhavik Shah is a final year medical student. He shares with us – how QMed made a difference in his quest to learn research methods:

I study in a premier medical college in India. At the undergraduate level there is no exposure to research. In my second year, I applied for the Short Term Studentship program of the Indian Council of Medical Research. My project was not selected, but I was lucky to be selected to present it at ‘Medicon’. Medicon is an annual conference for undergrad medical students. It was in this event, I learned how to search medical literature from Mrs. Vasumathi Sriganesh, founder of QMed. She delivered a lecture on this topic, at a workshop on Evidence Based Medicine. I took a lot of notes. I realized that I had hardly known anything about this!

A year later, a faculty member in my college encouraged me to submit two case reports. I referred to all my notes to do the search, and this helped me complete two manuscripts in a month! I submitted them to a PubMed indexed journal with a good impact factor. After a couple of revisions, (now that sounds quick, while I was doing the revisions, the intervals seemed long!) one morning I finally heard the ‘magic ping’ in my Blackberry – giving me the good news – “It is a pleasure to accept your manuscript for publication”!

Here is the link to my article. Thank you QMed – directly from the left ventricle of my heart :) You have no idea how grateful I am for the workshop at Medicon!

Bhavik Shah

What we did – September 2014

I)Training Programs / Talks / Consultative Meetings – Sep 2014

1. PubMed and Mendeley Workshop for the undergraduate students at ‘ILLUMINATI’ an undergraduate student conference organized by AFMC, Pune.- No. of participants 30

2. PubMed and Mendeley Workshop at Lotus College of Optometry, Mumbai. – No. of participants – Eight students of the M. Optom course.

II)Talks on literature searching / referencing /citing at

1. Hiranandani College of Nursing, Mumbai, for faculty and students of MSc Nursing – Sep 2

2. Dr. Vasantrao Pawar Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Nashik for PG students and faculty – Sep 5

3. Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, at a Clinical Research workshop for consultants and PG students from Mumbai. – Sep 13

4. GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai – for the Dept of Microbiology – Sep 15

5. DY Patil Ayurveda College, Navi Mumbai – Sep 18

6. MECOR workshop organized by American Thoracic Society at Gurgaon for consultants and related health professionals – Sep 22

7. Nair Dental College, Mumbai for Dental faculty from India- Sep 29

8. LTMMC – Sion, Mumbai, for the Dept of Anesthesiology – Sep 29

QMed Participates

A workshop by Mastek Foundation titled ‘Transforming NGOs- through ITA way to achieve sustainable Scale’.

2. The Cochrane Colloquium, Hyderabad. Some salient points about this event for QMed:

• Getting good visibility about our work and being able to raise some funds.

• A mention about how important our work was in the Cochrane and evidence context.

• Three trainers who conducted a workshop appreciated Vasumathi’s inputs and have requested her to join them as a co-trainer during the next Colloquium.

• Dr Prathap Tharyan introducing VS as the “face that appears at the start of every Cochrane 20 year video”

• Our learnings from the sessions attended.

Our first donor!

Brian Alper from Dynamed@our stall

The fund-raiser poster