QMedCONNECT Newsletter: April 2009

---

Dear friends,

April started off very well for us! In our last newsletter, we had requested for a donation of Rs. 48,000/- for sponsoring the training venue charges for one year. Within four hours of sending out the newsletter, we received an offer for this! We are also happy to announce that Sorento Healthcare has offered a sponsorship of Rs. 2500/-. Thanks to this we are offering a subsidy of Rs. 250/- for the first 10 participants for our forthcoming training program. The HELP library's founder offered us a free subscription to MD Consult, so that we could show it to participants of our training program, and help them decide about subscriptions to the rich content. Incidentally HELP has special rates for Indian doctors.

A very special piece of news is that I have a sponsorship for attending the International Congress on Medical Librarianship in Aug/Sept 2009 at Brisbane Australia. Based on my application for the sponsorship that was offered to participants from developing countries, I have been offered a complete waiver of the Conference Fees. I will be presenting a paper about our Foundation's work. I hope to gain a lot from the papers which will be presented by International librarians. I also hope that my interactions with other delegates will bring fresh ideas to help our Indian medical libraries and health professionals.

Another important development is that we have nearly finalized an Advisory Committee consisting of healthcare professionals with varied expertise and we hope that this body will help us go in the best directions, and help the Foundation reach out to large targets! We will introduce the people concerned in our next newsletter.

We would be happy to receive more views/suggestions by email at info@qmedkf.org.in.

In case you have not received our earlier issues - do check them out on our website.

Vasumathi Sriganesh

---

Membership

The month of April brought us one doctor, one student, three corporate members. Also CMC Vellore, ACTREC - Mumbai and TNPSWT -Chennai joined us as institutional members.

---

What we did- April 2009

Training programs: PubMed - Basics and Talks on Literature Searching

Forthcoming Programs

May 16, 2009 - Pikale Hospital, Mahim Mumbai
Our next PubMed Basics program will be held on Saturday, May 16, 2009 between 2.00PM and 5.30 PM at
Pikale Hospital (Seminar Room) 
"Uma-Mahesh",
M.M. Chotani Marg,
Cross Road-2, Mahim,
Mumbai - 400 016

Registration:

Limited registrations - maximum of 30 participants - on a first-come-first-served basis. The Fee is Rs. 500/- for students (proof of studentship required) and Rs.1000/- for other health professionals. Registrants from the Pharma industry will be charged Rs. 1500/- Payment can be made by cash, cheque or demand draft payable to "Quality Medical Knowledge Foundation". Please download the registration form from our website.

We have a sponsorship from Sorento Healthcare Communications Pvt Ltd, by which we can offer a subsidy of Rs. 250/- for the first 10 participants - either students or health professionals. To avail of the subsidy, advance payment is a must. Do call us on 40054474 to check if you are eligible.

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

---

Talks Invited

Vasumathi Sriganesh has been invited to deliver a lecture on "Literature searching" at the Research Methodology Workship scheduled for May 30th and 31st, conducted by the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology

---

Talks Delivered

Vasumathi Sriganesh gave a talk on Library Science as a Career Option, at the Co-operative Education programme (CEP) - a unique Career Guidance Workshop for the undergraduate students of Wilson College, Mumbai, on the 8th of April. This is part of our initiative in promoting the profession of Library & Information Sciences.

---

Donations to QMed Knowledge Foundation

We accept donations only 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.

---

Special Announcement!!

1. Medicon 2009 - The Second Asian and Third National Medical Students' Research Conference, will be held during the dates - 24th to 28th June 2009 at Kasturba Medical College Mangalore. Organized by INFORMER, the target audience is UG medical students. For more details check outhttp://www.informer.org.in/Conferences

2. The Indian Journal of Ophthalmology (IJO) in association with P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Center, Mumbai, is conducting a workshop on "Medical Research and Scientific Writing" on the 30th and 31st May, 2009 in Mumbai. It is open for medical practitioners, teachers and undergraduate as well as postgraduate students of any specialty. To register call Bineeta on 24447165 / 9833703046 (between 9 AM and 5 PM) or email editor@ijo.in

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.

3. Thanks to the efforts of the HELP Library, doctors in India can now subscribe to MDConsult at special rates and get access to about 50 reference books, 70 journals (including Clinics), Practice guidelines and lots more. For more detailsclick here.

4. Supercourse Lectures. Supercourse is a repository of lectures on global health and prevention designed to improve the teaching of prevention. Supercourse has a network of over 64000 scientists in 174 countries who are sharing for free a library of 3623 lectures in 30 languages. The Supercourse 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 the entire content, and we are willing to copy it - as requested by Ronald and give it to interested individuals/institutions. 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 at info@qmedkf.org.in if you wish to receive a copy.

---

Article of the Month:

R Agarwal MD, J Kalita DM, UK Misra DM

Barriers to evidence based medicine practice in South Asia and possible solutions

Neurology Asia 2008; 13: 87-94

The authors mention that teaching the practice of Evidence Based Medicine is practically non-existent in our medical curriculum, due to various barriers. Bridging these barriers involves effective teaching of skills of evidence-based medicine during residency, motivating established clinicians, increasing the accessibility to internet, and several other approaches. Even if a busy clinician recognizes and agrees with evidence-based practice, the literature applicable to the patient is not easily accessible and facilities for making literature searches may not be available at hand. The basic essentials of EBM is literature search which demands time devoted to reading, a precious commodity for our practitioners. Introducing courses on literature searching and critical appraisal at the beginning of residency and integrating them into clinical training are strongly recommended. An effort must be made to ensure that interlibrary loans are very efficient; the role of librarian as a team member in the EBM training process should be enhanced.
Our Foundation heartily agrees with these points and look forward to hearing from like minded health professionals to join hands with us in taking things ahead in this direction!

---

Quote of the Month

"The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic -in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea -known to medical science is work".

by Thomas S. Szasz

---

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

We have added 30 new sites in the last month and the total number of sites is about 2330. 

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.

---

Copyright © QMed Knowledge Foundation – Trust registered with the Charity Commissioner Mumbai – Registration No: E-24663