QMedCONNECT: Novemeber 2008

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: November 2008

Dear friends,

It happened after a long wait. Just after our last newsletter was emailed to all of you, we received our 80-G certificate! We will now explore all opportunities to raise funds and will be happy to get any leads or advice in this matter.

This month we again conducted four training programs (PubMed-Basics). The fourth happened unexpectedly and quickly, which really made us feel good and more reassured about future possibilities.

We'd like to reiterate an observation over 15 programs that we did this year. We test participants before and after the program. There is a very significant increase in the percentage of correct answers after the event. While this is good, we wish to do better. We'd like every single participant to show better results. We are constantly working at improving the delivery of the program. We also wish to plan studies to know the impact of our training programs in the professional lives of our participants.

We had an excellent piece of feedback about our literature search, article delivery and alert service from a member in Hyderabad - Dr. Sudhakar Krishnamurti. We have shared his words with you in this issue.

Feedback from youngsters at conferences and workshops are very encouraging. We share a couple of these too.

But we do realize that we still have "miles to go" and in our own way we are just at the beginning and have plenty of challenges ahead.

We will be a year old on the 17th of December, 2008. We are planning a small Anniversary celebration on the 9th of January 2009. More details about this in our next newsletter.

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

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

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Participation In Events:

Vasumathi Sriganesh attended the "KRM 2008 - Evidence Based Approach: Information Resource, Service and Practice" Seminar at the Tata Memorial Hospital during the dates November 11 - 12, 2008. She was invited to make an impromptu presentation at the event. One young librarian shared her sentiment through an email - "The presentation which you had given has taught me lot many new things apart from what I was doing. It will help me a lot in improving my searching strategies even more & to practice Evidence based Librarianship. Freshers like me will always be happy to see you in each & every seminar/conference sharing a piece from your abundant knowledge in the field."

What we did- November 2008

Training programs: PubMed - Basics and Talks on Literature Searching

On November 4, 2008 we conducted two training sessions at the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences, Bengaluru. In June we had already done two sessions for PG Students. We are happy that they found our program useful and asked for the same once more. More importantly, we are very happy to share that the Dean of the Institution also participated in the event. There were about 40 participants at KIMS.

On Sunday, November 9, 2008 we conducted the same program in Pikale Hospital at Mahim, Mumbai. We had 11 participants, with a mix of senior doctors, students and people from the Pharma industry. One participant came over from Baroda; he mentioned that his wife attended the event that we held last month and recommended it very strongly to him.

The third program this month was on Sunday, November 30, 2008 in Hyderabad. We had 22 participants - this time a mix of doctors, students and laboratory professionals. An excellent feedback that we'd like to share from someone who never used PubMed before is:
"I always believe a teacher's role began when the student knew nothing. I never felt better about a teacher. It was a wonderful session, very systematic". Thanks to the Infertility Institute and Research Centre, this program was organized in a week's time.

The overall feedback we got from 71 participants - 43 said that it exceeded their expectations and 24 said it met their expectations. We are very happy with this and are also checking out how we can implement some of the excellent suggestions that participants share.

Forthcoming Programs

December 7, 2008

We invite registrations for our next program on Sunday, Dec 7, 2008 at:
Pikale Hospital (Seminar Room)
"Uma-Mahesh",
M.M. Chotani Marg,
Cross Road-2, Mahim,
Mumbai -400 016

Timing: 9.30 AM - 1 PM

December 24, 2008
Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore for the faculty of the college.

We also invite registrations / expression of interest for next "PubMed - Basics" training program, which is scheduled to be held on Sunday 22nd February 2009 between 9.30 AM and 1 PM

The venue will be announced later. We'd be very happy if people can offer a free/low cost space to conduct our training programs

Invitations for talks

December 18, 2008: Preconference workshop at Meditel 2008, Chennai on Searching Medical Literature.

Talks Delivered

Ms. Sriganesh gave talks on medical literature searching/related topics, at the following events:

November 7, 2008 - at the Annual Conference of theKarnataka Ophthalmic Society, in Shimoga

November 21, 2008 - at the 11th workshop on "Medical Informatics and Biomedical Communication" at the Jamnalal Bajaj Tropical Disease Research Centre, of the MGIMS at Sewagram, Wardha. She also gave a brief demo on Searching PubMed to the participants. This was very well received and one participant specially conveyed his sentiment by saying"This one session itself was worth my registration fee; the other sessions added up as bonuses".

Some updates on recent projects/ventures

The website for the National Institute of Immunohaematologywas launched on 10th November 2008.

New project/initiatives

We are just beginning to work on an exciting project with the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, Mumbai Branch, and will share details with you in our next newsletter.

New Members:

We welcome five new Consultant members - A diabetologist and a Chest medicine specialist from Mumbai, and three Gynecologists from Hyderabad.

If you wish to join as a member click here

Feedback from a member from Hyderabad on our membership services:

I can honestly state that the QMedKF is one of the best academic things that's happened to me in a long time. If I had had such a facility when I started my career several years ago, I'd have had more than 500 peer-reviewed publications by now !

An absolutely professional outfit, QMedKF is a real boon to academically minded medical professionals in private practice who have little (or difficult) access to journals, literature, reference materials, etc.. I strongly encourage our medical colleagues, both young and old, to utilize this facility. The charges are most reasonable. QMedKF is also especially significant to me because it comes at a time when we are just launching AGASSI's journal, JASMAG, and I am sure that this QMedKF development will help the journal take off from Day One. I also envision now a sudden boom in the numbers of medical papers emerging from the Indian sub-continent. I congratulate the QMedKF team on their initiative and wish them the very best.

Dr. Sudhakar Krishnamurti - Andrologist, Microsurgeon & Sexual Medicine Consultant

Donations to QMed Knowledge Foundation

We are delighted to share with you that we have got our 80-G certificate !

If you appreciate our unique mission, and would like to support us, we will ensure that the donation you make is not only utilized with utmost care but also with a high degree of transparency and accountability. No contribution is too little. 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.

Article of the Month:

Nayak BK. Why should you publish in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology? Indian J Ophthalmol 2008;56:451-2

Dr. Nayak gives seven reasons why authors should publish in the IJO. We at QMed believe that Indian healthcare professionals should work together to ensure Indian publications reach a high standard. People should want to publish in Indian journals. We should reach a day, when Indians having publications in Indian journals get more weightage in various career evaluation processes.

Quote of the Month

Medical research in the twentieth century mostly takes place in the lab; in the Renaissance, though, researchers went first and foremost to the library to see what the ancients had said.

Peter Lewis Allen

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

The total number of sites has crossed 2224. If you are interested in volunteering to add new sites, 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.