QMedCONNECT: October 2010

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: October 2010

Dear friends,

October was a "learning month" for me and coincidentally a lot was based on Psychology and related areas. I love the subject as a lay person, so it was fun too! The first instance was at a Leadership Retreat where my fellow participants and I experienced an interaction process that led to introspection. The second was lectures by two Psychologists at a librarians' conference. The third was listening to Ms. Anu Aga - former Chairperson of Thermax, at an event by TIE, Mumbai. Each of these exposures has contributed to some more growth in me, and I hope it will contribute further to QMedKF's growth.

I am happy to share that we will be working with Research personnel at the FRCH, Pune to help them in their Literature Review processes, for their projects. FRCH in a way starts our proposed "Friend of the Foundation" relationship. We look forward to working with them, and hope to make a difference in their literature search and reference management processes.

I had the opportunity to deliver four one hour lectures on literature searching this month - two in medical colleges, one, in a small hospital and one for a mixed audience. I was delighted to note that in the Herbertpur Christian Hospital - located in Herbertpur, a small town near Dehradun, they had a small, but excellent library with six computers with Internet access for their 12 PG students. The library also had a good lecture hall with excellent facilities.

My request for support for travel to do similar lectures in medical colleges in different cities and towns still stands. Anyone willing to sponsor travel / reward points - please do write to me with your offer and I will get back to you with a plan of action.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Do You Know?

NCBI has a new "Image Finder". This database has around 3 million images from free resources deposited in the NCBI (eg - PubMed Central journals). All images are subject to the general copyright restrictions. The url ishttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/images (You can also reach this from PubMed). From the Dropdown option above the PubMed search box, choose "Images". Try out the following in the site - prediction AND type 2 diabetes

For a Quick Start Guide, on using the Images database, click here

Our Forthcoming Programs / Lectures

19th / 20th November 2010: Talk on "Ethics in Literature Searching" at the Third National Bioethics Confernce, New Delhi.

24th November, 2010: Talk on Literature Searching at a Preconference Workshop on Research Methodology at Nair Hospital, Mumbai.

27th November, 2010: Training Program - PubMed Advanced & Cochrane Library, at the Lotus College of Optometry, Mumbai.

We invite medical colleges/hospitals to contact us for organizing a program for PG students, faculty and health professionals. Please check out details at our website.

Other Events of Interest

8th-12th November 2010: Systematic Review Protocol Completion and Review Update Workshop. Conducted by the SACN, CMC Vellore. More details

17th-20th November 2010: Third National Bioethics Conference, organized by the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. More details

3rd-5th December 2010: Workshop on 'Introduction to Clinical Trials and Good Clinical Practices'. NIH supported course, conducted by faculty of SGPGI, Lucknow, at Goa.More details

November 2010-onwards: Clinical Research Workshop Series. Conducted by the Public Health Foundation of India.More details

May 11th - 14th 2011: Medicon 2011: Medicon is an annual international research conference for undergraduate medical students organized in India. It presents a platform for young scientists and future doctors to meet, interact and present their research. 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 designed to improve the teaching of Prevention. Supercourse is a library of 3623 lectures in 30 languages. It has been produced at the WHO Collaborating Center University of Pittsburgh, with core developers Ronald LaPorte and others.

Our Foundation has received a CD of entire content, and are distributing it for free to institutions during our training programs and also to anyone requesting for the same. This will be useful if you do not wish to view all lectures on the Internet for various reasons. Please get in touch with us atinfo@qmedkf.org.in if you wish to receive a copy.

Article of the Month

Aggarwal S, Singh H, Bansal P, Goyal A, Saminder Singh K.

Training in clinical research in India.

Indian J Community Med. 2010 Jul;35(3):446.

This is a "Letter to the Editor" commenting on an earlier article in the same journal on Clinical Research Institutes and the lack of training in clinical research in the regular medical curriculum. The letter is written by four medical students (who would probably be voicing the views of the majority of the student community), who make an earnest plea for the introduction of a research based medical education curriculum. They mention the admission criteria for the PG degree courses in the US and UK, where importance is placed on research projects done by a student. The authors advocate a change and emphasize that such changes will bring large benefits to the health care systems and patients.

What we did –October 2010

Training Programs / Talks: Literature searching:

5th October 2010: Talk on Literature Searching for students and faculty of the SGRR Institute of Medical Health Sciences, Dehra Dun. Around 120 students and faculty attended the event

6th October, 2010: Talk on Literature Searching for students and faculty of the Herbertpur Christian Hospital, Herbertpur, Dehra Dun.

10th October, 2010: Talk on Literature Searching at a one-day workshop on Research Methodology, in Patna conducted by Dr B.K Nayak, Editor IJO and organized by the Bihar and Jharkhand Journals of Ophthalmology

11th October, 2010: Talk on Literature Searching at a one-day workshop on Research Methodology, in Kanpur, conducted by Dr B.K Nayak, Editor IJO and organized by the GSVM Medical College, Kanpur

30th October, 2010: Presentation of two case studies of our Small Digital Library projects (FMR, Mumbai and JIVAS, Bengaluru) at a seminar organized by the Bombay Science Librarians Association, with TISS, Mumbai.

Lecture Hall of Herbertpur Christian Hospital, Library

New project for FRCH, Pune

The Foundation for Research in Community Health, Pune has invited us to help them out with structured programs in Literature searching for their regular needs as well as specific project needs. In addition, they would like us to help them develop search strategies, get regular updates and use a Reference Management software optimally. Our CEO conducted one training program on the 2nd of Nov for their staff and we will be working with them in the coming months for all their needs.

Sessions at UnLtd India

In October, our CEO attended a two day Leadership Retreat camp organized by UnLtd India. She reports: "Almost all our time was spent with two consultants from "Flow Consulting". With a series of questions, followed by observations, responses and interactions, they helped each one of us get a better insight into issues that currently challenged us. We also learnt the ABCs of how to ask such questions and carry out a similar process with others. In addition to this enriching session, we were given an opportunity to speak with those aspiring to be UnLtd investees and share with them, our journey into Social Entrepreneurship. Next day, we also had an opportunity to help them with their presentations to panelists. Overall a very rewarding experience!"

New PG members

This month we had four PG students taking our membership help with literature searching for their theses.

Document Delivery of Journal Articles

In the month of October 2010, we delivered 165 articles to individual members, libraries and corporate clients. The total number of documents delivered since April 2010 is 970.

Funding

For any not-for-profit organization, sustenance is a challenge every now and then. Assurance of basic needs (infrastructure and salaries) makes a huge difference to the time we can commit to carry out activities. Contributions from those who sincerely believe that our activities are vital will be deeply appreciated.
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.

Quote of the Month

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien-

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

We have added 25 new sites in October and the total number of sites is about 3185.

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.