QMedCONNECT: June 2010

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: June 2010

Dear friends,

Change is an inevitable component in our lives. At QMedKF, we are constantly open to change, more so because we are working at making changes in a very niche area of medical education and research. UnLtd India is helping us think through our entire quest, with their own expertise as well as by helping us interact with other thinkers who make us think with several different view points!

We believe that we should work at a change; actually a "tweak" in our focus. We plan to direct it more towards medical students and the academic sector. This will help us help tomorrow's health professionals have a sound basis in literature searching, which is an extremely important building block for evidence based medical practice. The sharpening of our focus will still involve our core activities, namely training programs and those that deal with infrastrcture required for access to quality information. We may have to reprioritize some of our other activities. We are sure things will evolve as we work on them!

While on the issue of focusing on academics and research, it was interesting that in June, I had a chance to interact with FAIMER fellows and share my views. In this newsletter I have also highlighted two letters on the area of Research in medical education. I am discovering many people with the "same wave length", so I hope we work with them and their inputs, to spread our expertise and help bring about some good changes!

And finally on the note of "changes", with a mixture of wistfulness and joy, we share with you - that our Director-Programs, Girish Kunkur will be leaving us at the end of the month. We will miss him greatly. But, he will always be available to us as an advisor! We wish him the very best in his new assignment.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Do You Know?

SlideWorld is a Powerful resource for Powerpoint Slide Presentations. It is a web resource designed to facilitate educational process of medical professionals. The goal of SlideWorld is to facilitate a "presentation sharing community" for medical practitioners and health enthusiasts. Have a quick look!

Our Forthcoming Programs / Lectures

We have some invited lectures and programs coming up in August 2010. We do not have programs scheduled for July, but are willing to conduct either a PubMed Basics or PubMed Advanced program in Mumbai, on July 18th or 25th, if we have at least 15 participants. So those who have been wanting to attend our programs, but could not - please do get in touch with us. If you can spread the word and get friends with you, it will be easy to get the required numbers.

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

12th - 15th July 2010: Ethical Issues in Health Research. Conducted by The Indian Institute of Public Health, New Delhi.More details

31st July - 1st Aug 2010: An Intermediate level Research Methodology Workshop conducted by the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, jointly with Hinduja Hospital, at the P.D.Hinduja National Hospital, Mumbai. More details

2nd - 6th Aug 2010: Introduction to EB Healthcare and Systematic Review Protocol Development Workshop
Conducted by the SACN, CMC Vellore. More details

11th - 15th Sep 2010: Workshop on Scientific Writing. NIH supported course, conducted by faculty of SGPGI, Lucknow, at Goa. More details

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

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

This time, we would like to highlight two letters published in the current issue of IJMR, both based on an earlier article (Deo MG). on the need for research oriented medical education in India. (We had featured this in our newsletter issue of Sep 2009). One is from a student who has expressed his feelings and experiences and has offered suggestions. The other is from a faculty member who has been part of an initiative to do something about this. We hope to hear more from students and faculty on this topic!

1. Biswas, T. Research oriented medical education. Indian J Med Res. 2010 July; 132:111
2. Mahajan PB. ROME scheme: From reorientation to research oriented medical education, a new beginning.
Indian J Med Res. 2010 July; 132:110

What we did –June 2010

Training Programs / Talks: Literature searching:

6th June. PubMed Basics: At Nagpur This was organized for Nephrologists and Urologists by a local association.

19th June. PubMed Advanced: At Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai for their consultants and residents.

20th June. PubMed Basics. At Pikale Hospital, Mumbai, open to all.

FAIMER Fellowship Lecture. Vasumathi Sriganesh took a session on medical education resources and literature searching to medical teachers who are FAIMER fellows. This was organized by the GSMC-FAIMER Regional Institute. The lecture was very well received and all Fellows were very keen to have more interactions with QMedKF for enhanced learning.

Sessions at UnLtd India

This month, we had five sessions with UnLtd India - the organization that selected our CEO as an investee for coaching. Some sessions were group based, some were one-to-one and covered issues relating to strategizing, budgeting and more.

E-Library Project for the Diabetic Foot Society of India

The E-Library project for the DFSI was successfully completed. The Society has initiated provision of access to its members. We got a short and sweet compliment for the project "It is a great effort" - from the Secretary, Dr. G. Goyal.

Document Delivery of Journal Articles

In the month of June 2010, we delivered 134 articles to individual members, libraries and corporate clients. The total number of documents delivered since April 2010 is 390.

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

"Medical science has proven time and again that when the resources are provided, great progress in the treatment, cure, and prevention of disease can occur."- Michael J. Fox
(Actor who set up the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research)

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

We have added 25 new sites in June and the total number of sites is about 3085.

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.