QMedCONNECT March 2021 - Cureous Commons, Reflective Summaries and more

QMedCONNECT: Highlights

March 2021

For the past several months, we had stopped mailing our newsletters. We had them up on our website at www.qmed.ngo/newsletter and shared the links on Social media. We brainstormed and planned to see that the newsletters have a lot of useful content. And now, we once again bring them to you by email.

You are receiving this issue as you were on our list earlier. In case you do not wish to receive our newsletter by email, please unsubscribe by scrolling to the end of this issue and cancelling or editing your subscription,

You could book mark the page - www.qmed.ngo/newsletter on our website and check it out when you wish to.

What do we have for you this month?

Our CEO has written two blog posts about librarianship in health sciences and the dire need to focus on building librarians with a far greater involvement in health sciences research.

This month we had ten International Observances and QMed has described them in blog posts and has also created PubMed links for each - the links provide search results on topics - getting you systematic reviews and reviews that are free.

Teaching basic research skills at the Undergraduate level is not just important but is getting critical. The National Medical Commission has introduced this recently in the medical curriculum. And we have an article from Manipal - that shows how important this is - from the summaries written by the students themselves!

And finally - we see how involving patients in research is a great idea - and we share a site that describes this and invites collaborations.

The QMed Team

From our Blog - Our CEO's Posts

Vasumathi Sriganesh once again writes about how our libraries and librarians should evolve. She quotes an article where health science librarians have taught EBM to first year medical students and achieved good results. She also shares a blog post by the Director of the National Library of Medicine USA who writes about the NLM's role in sharing the knowledge needed to produce vaccines! In both posts, Vasumathi stresses the need for India to revamp libraries and librarians' roles to reach far higher levels.

Post 1 - Health Sciences Librarians - II. Involvement in teaching students about EBM

This is my second post about elevating Health Sciences Libraries and Librarians in India. Here I would like to share an example from an article in the Journal of the Medical Library Association (USA) - about a study by a librarian and his medical colleagues.

This article discusses how a health sciences librarian conducted an introductory course on EBM for first year medical students and how he specifically did an intervention to improve their ability to "formulate an answerable question".

Post 2 - Health Science Librarians - the NLM (USA) and vaccines

Early in March the Director of the National Library of Medicine or NLM (USA) - Dr Patti Brennan wrote this blog post - Vaccines, Vaccinations, and NLM. She describes briefly her own journey to getting the vaccine.

More interestingly she described how libraries in the US helped the public getting their vaccine, how the NLM played a big role in helping get the vaccine to all. In India we are aware of teachers being roped in for election duties and more. I wonder whether we would ever think of librarians being involved in vaccination efforts? Let us learn what they did out there.

From our Blog - International Observances

The month of March has 10 observances. We searched PubMed for articles of interest in each of these areas. We have provided "PubMed search results" - which link to the search we did, retrieving articles available free.

World TB Day - 24th March PubMed search results - Our blog post.

World Water Day - 22nd March PubMed search results - Our blog post

International Happiness Day - 20th March PubMed search results - Our blog post

Measles immunization day - 16th March PubMed search results - Our blog post

World Disabled Day - 15th March PubMed search results - Our blog post

World Kidney Day - 11th March PubMed search results - Our blog post

No Smoking Day - 10th March PubMed search results - Our blog post

International Women's Day - 8th March PubMed search results - Our blog post

World Glaucoma Day - 6th March PubMed search results - Our blog post

World Hearing Day - 3rd March PubMed search results - Our blog post

From our Blog - Interesting Articles

Medical students can be mentored to enjoy research!

Evaluation of a mentored student project programme using reflective summaries
Devi V, Abraham RR. Natl Med J India. 2020 Mar-Apr;33(2):102-106.

This article is one amongst a very few* in PubMed that describes a project where medical students have been taught to write "reflective summaries" after doing a research project. Very simply put a reflective summary is a a write up "about the research experience" that each student went through. This - they had to do after completing a research project, writing an abstract and presenting a poster on the same. All students were part of an MSP - mentored student programme.

*Articles describing reflective summaries in PubMed

From our Blog - Do You Know?

There are wonderful resources out on the Internet which we may or may not be aware of. We at QMed share these with you, whenever we learn about them.

Cureous Commons

An interesting platform with research data being open to both health researchers and patients. According to this non profit initiative Cureous encourages collaboration and open investigations. And they encourage patient collaborators! This sounds very interesting.

The page - Why this initiative explains their intentions and encourages public and private organizations to become partners and thus build a consortium

Lectures & Webinars this month

02-03-2021 - Maharashtra University of Health Sciences- 50 participants. Topic - Literature searching. (Live Lecture)

23-03-2021 - Y.M.T. Homoeopathic Medical College & Hospital- 40 participants. Topic - Literature searching. (Webinar)

QMedCourses News

New institutions:

AO Telehealth Services, Chennai joins us for Institutional access for QMedCourses!
We are in discussions with some more institutions and hope to add their names soon.

We present some current statistics about the overall progress of our courses.

Course	Certified	Total Enrolled
Information Resources & Literature Searching (IRLS)	292	2458
Introduction to Referencing (IR)	195	518
Mastering PubMed (PM)	120	2083
Reference Management with Mendeley (RMM)	98	2083

Testimonials for QMedCourses

Course: Information Resources & Literature Searching
It is a well designed concise course. Very good for new learner as well as a refresher course for the seasoned researcher. Chinmay Rao, MGM Dental College and Hospital, Kamothe

Course : Introduction to Referencing
The course was very interesting and knowledgeable. I would definitely recommend it further. Neelam Salvi, MGM Dental College and Hospital, Kamothe

Course : Mastering PubMed
The course is very elaborate and understandable, The teacher teaches with cool pace which anyone can understand. I really appreciate the effort to teach every details in the PubMed. Gunaseelan P, Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences.

Course : Reference Management with Mendeley
Fruitful, informative, comprehensive learning.The demos and recaps were the best aspect for reinforcing our learning and furthering our understanding. Subarna Mitra, AIIMS Bhubaneshwar.

How you can engage with us