QMedCONNECT Newsletter: August 2014

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Dear friends

August has been a mix of rain and sunshine and interestingly, we have had heavy spells on the last day of the month! And it continues. That I guess is a reminder that our lives too are filled with rain and sunshine. One element of sunshine we have had at QMed is to welcome to our team Ms Fatima Shaikh. Fatima had worked for QMed, before we started the Foundation. She then worked at a couple of corporate entities, gaining a lot of experience in technology. After a break for marriage and family, the longing for librarianship based work struck again and she has  joined us. In the very first month she has given us reasons to smile, with her inputs on integrating more technology for our progress!

This month, apart from the four lectures on literature searching that I delivered at research methodology workshops, I had the privilege of delivering a lecture at the DY Patil Medical College in Navi Mumbai.  The University is celebrating its Silver Jubilee Year and as part of this, they invited me to talk on “The challenges of bridging the information literacy gap, for the practice of evidence based health care in India“. A topic after my own heart, I deeply appreciated the authorities for giving me the privilege of speaking on it. When a couple of people from the audience remarked that it was an eye opener, I felt I’d done a good job!

August was also the month for celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi – a festival extra important in Maharashtra. We wish all of you a happy festival and the best of things to come.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

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Young physician story: 

Kaustubh is a young physician who has worked in remote tribal areas and is keen on research.  He attended our PubMed workshop a few months ago and wrote to share with us, how it helped in his tribal research.

Long back I read in the TOI (Times of India) – that the finesse of a great teacher lies in breaking down the most intricate theorems to lucid nursery axioms. For example, Heisenberg the father of particle physics said that a great teacher is one who can make E=mc2 sound as simple as 2+2=4. All I can say is that the workshop on PubMed by Vasumathi Sriganesh embodies this trait.

After attending her workshop I can share some learning benefits:

• I’ve worked extensively on Cerebral Malaria in tribal Assam, an area devoid of any guidelines or even significant literature. MeSH helped me enormously in retrieving papers on ‘Falciparum Malaria in Asia’ and also ‘Tribal research’.

• While working on other papers in Neurology I benefited largely from filters and simple searches to weed out redundant and irrelevant papers.

• Saved Searches and Collections: I always tend to clutter even the good papers that I find online. These two features helped me sort, index and also share the work I did on PubMed, which was a huge time saver for me.·

I was also introduced to the Cochrane Library – especially CDSR – which makes me very eager to participate in meta-analysis studies.

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What we did – August 2014

I)Talks on literature searching / referencing /citing at

  1. LTMMC – Sion, Mumbai, for  faculty – Aug 7
  2. INHS Asvini, Colaba, for faculty and PGs – Aug 20
  3. RJMC, Kalwa, for faculty – Aug 21
  4. LTMMC – Sion, Mumbai, for faculty and PGs  – Aug 22

And a talk at the DY Patil University – as part of their Silver Jubilee Year – Aug 25

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QMed Participates

• Vasumathi attended a Meeting of the Bombay Science Librarians Association (BOSLA) where three retired librarians were felicitated.  A lecture on Cloud Computing, and a presentation on some information products enriched the event. Mrs Kolekar, who was the librarian of the Seth GS Medical College & KEM Hospital for more than two decades, was one among the three librarians who were honoured. 

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