QMedCONNECT: March 2012

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: March 2012

Dear friends,

I simply love the fact that my interaction with students is increasing in leaps and bounds. "Investing" in the health sciences student community today, I believe, will create better professionals tomorrow. When I interact with them, I learn so much more and gain so many new insights which I am hoping will help QMed create better avenues to teach them more research and writing skills.

This month I attended "Konference" - a research event for students of medicine, biotechnology and allied subjects. I had the pleasure of meeting Faculty from the University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, who have been working on another much needed area for students (and of course faculty / practitioners)- "Medical Humanities". Do check out work by Drs Navjeevan Singh, Upreet Dhaliwal, Satendra Singh and their team athttp://medicaleducationunit.yolasite.com/medical-humanities.php

I also had the pleasure of delivering a lecture on literature searching exclusively for Physiotherapists (for the first time) at the KJ Somaiya Medical College, Mumbai. They were an extremely interactive audience!

The article of the month is one that I wrote for a students’ journal, and I hope you find it useful!

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Help QMed GROW

To those who just know us and believe in our cause and efforts- Give us a donation - large or small. The "drops" make the ocean!

If you are a healthcare professional or student, you could become a "Friend of QMed". You will be contributing to one of the most important initiatives for the health care profession! AND, you will get all the help that we can provide with our expertise.

Becoming a "Friend" is like being a "donor member". We request for a donation of Rs. 2000/- per year. From PG students we request for Rs. 1000/- and from UGs Rs. 500/- (If you are a member of INFORMER, you automatically become a Friend of QMed, because you have already committed to the same cause out there!)

Do check out our website www.qmedkf.org.in for details.We accept donations by cheques in favour of Quality Medical Knowledge Foundation. You may send the cheques to our address, or you could ask us for our account details. You will get the applicable IT Exemption for donations under Section 80G of the Indian Income Tax Act.

Do You Know?

Hesperian Digital Commons

http://hesperian.org/digital-commons/ - is an online resource providing health information in 26 languages of the world. Of interest to Indians, it currently includes Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Sindhi, Tamil & Urdu
An initiative of “Hesperian Health Guides” which is a health information and health education source that develops easy to read health education resource materials.

Forthcoming Training Programs on literature searching and reference management:

Date to be announced: Literature searching & PubMed - for UG students attending a Clinical Research Workshop at KEM Hospital

Other Events of Interest

Public Health Foundation of India's events in April. More details

Short course in Biostatistics - May 14 - June 22, 2012, at CMC, Vellore. More details

INFORMER's Medicon 2012 - July 11-14, 2012, at MGIMS, Sevagram, Wardha. More details

If you are organizing or know about other conferences, pre-conference workshops or training programs related to medical research, do let us know; we would like to include these in our website and newsletter.

Resources for You:

Supercourse Lectures. Supercourse is a repository of lectures on Global Health and Prevention. if you wish to receive a copy, do write to us at info@qmedkf.org.in

UpToDate. We, as trainers of UpToDate - [www.uptodate.com], can give one month complimentary trial passwords. Do write to us atinfo@qmedkf.org.in if you would like to have one.

Article of the Month

Sriganesh V

Accuracy in the technical aspects of an article contributes to improving retrieval.

International Journal of Students' Research 2.1 (2012): 3-5.

It is interesting that good articles may actually not be retrieved by the very audience that may need them, because some technical aspect was either not accurate or not given the attention to detail that was warranted. It is getting increasingly important for authors and editors to learn more about the technical aspects of an article to ensure that ‘every article has its reader’. This article aims to address these issues. It explains some of the common technical elements, the importance of accuracy and the right choices of terms, not only to ensure that they conform to prescribed publishing standards, but also for better retrieval through electronic bibliographical databases.

What we did – March 2012

Training Programs / Talks: Literature searching/ Consultative meetings

6th March - Lecture on literature searching for Physiotherapy students at KJ Somaiya Medical College, Mumbai

15th March - Lecture on literature searching at Max Hospital, Delhi (sponsored program)

17th-18th March - Konference, Kolkata - (an event for health sciences students)
1) Talk on literature searching
2) Keynote address - "Your career path – let what you can control guide you in your decisions"

Document Delivery of Journal Articles

In the month of March 2012, we delivered 60 articles to individual members & libraries. The total number of documents delivered since April 2011 is 780.

Quote of the Month

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
- Samuel Johnson - 1709-1784

Directory of Indian Medical Sites (www.indianmedicalsites.in)

We have added 25 new sites in the month of March and the total number of sites is 3575.

We invite volunteers to add new sites. If you would like to help, do write to us and we will send you a set of instructions that will make it easier for you to work. Please write "Volunteering for Indian Medical Sites" in the Subject of the email.