QMedCONNECT: July 2008

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: August 2008

Dear friends,

Last month I shared with you a very satisfying experience of having conducted five training programs. In July, we approached the Ashwini Hospital in Colaba Mumbai with an offer to conduct our PubMed Basics training program. We were delighted when we were invited to conduct it within two days. My colleague, Girish Kunkur, and I also visited some institutions in Pune and we have had encouraging responses. Additionally, our June newsletter resulted in introductions to academicians in Kolkata and Delhi, who have shown an interest in organizing our programs.

This encouraging "feedback and activity" based on our Newsletter had us thinking - can we get more help from our readers? We have an important objective - "Empowering the medical information user" and we believe that many of you have much to offer us. Our newsletter currently reaches nearly 1500 people (a majority of them being healthcare professionals) and we are adding more recipients every month. We believe that each of you can help us in some way. You could offer help yourselves; forward our newsletter to anyone else who may be able to help us achieve our objectives and we would be very happy if you introduced us to like minded people.

This month, I had the pleasure of attending a Conference on the Science of Research, in Gurgaon. I was happy to have many doctors asking me more about our Foundation. I must make a special mention about Dr. Suneeta Mittal of AIIMS, who made encouraging comments about my presentation and wished me the very best for our Foundation.

Finally, a word about our efforts in collaborations. We have taken our first step in working with Medknow Publications keeping in mind our objective of contributing to improving medical writing and publishing. Medknow has already made great strides in this, and we are happy to have a role with them. We hope that this collaboration will make a big difference. We also hope to share news about one more collaboration next month.

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

Vasumathi Sriganesh

What we did- July 2008

Training programs in July - PubMed Basics

This month, we did a PubMed Basics training program at the INHS Ashwini Hospital, Mumbai, on July 10. We had 34 participants - two faculty members and the rest being PG students. This time too, our assessment tests showed that participants were able to answer questions about searching with much more confidence, after the program. Again, a large majority indicated (through their feedback) that they would be happy to recommend the program to their colleagues and that our program should be a part of the PG curriculum.

Lectures

- Vasumathi Sriganesh was invited as Faculty, at the Third National Conference on the Science of Research, organized jointly by FOGSI and the Gurgaon Ob-Gyn Society. At a pre-conference workshop on July 25, she gave a talk on Literature searching. The next day, she delivered a lecture on the topic, Changing scenarios in literature searching, during the main conference session.

- Parvati Iyer delivered a lecture, on Searching medical literature, to UG students doing a Clinical Research program at the KEM Hospital

Some updates

Improving the quality of Medical Writing in India

As a part of our long term strategy, we are keen on taking a few initiatives to improve the quality of Medical Writing in India, to achieve the following objectives:

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To improve the quality of writing in Indian medical journals by undertaking high quality copy editing work so that their standards are raised to international levels.

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To encourage more authors to contribute articles in Indian journals, as a result of improved quality.

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To conduct training programs in Medical writing and copy editing to help young authors write better and to help ensure production of high quality medical literature in India.

In order to achieve these, the Foundation has taken the first steps in this direction by taking on some copy editing work for Medknow Publications - a leading publisher in India for academic and scientific, peer-reviewed, online+print open access journals.

With Medknow, we are also looking at the possibility of holding training programs in Medical writing, for post-graduate medical students, Medical consultants and academic staff of medical colleges and other interested people in the healthcare sector.

We solicit your views/suggestions by email at info@qmedkf.org.in

Donations to QMed Knowledge Foundation

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.
You will also get an IT Exemption for donations under Section 80G of the Indian Income Tax Act

IT Exemption for donations under Section 80G of the Indian Income Tax Act

We should be getting this in a month's time. Meanwhile, we would be happy to begin receiving donations, as we will be able to give a copy of the 80G certificate at the end of the Financial Year. We need to build a corpus fund and we also need donations for specific activities. We will be outlining the specifics in the next couple of months. Meanwhile any donation is welcome and we promise that it will be put to good use. The first donation that we received on the day of our Inaugural function was Rs. 50,000/- and we are planning to buy an LCD projector with this, which we could use for all our training programs. Of course, if we come up with a better alternative, we will change our plans and share it with our well wishers.

Article of the Month:

Smith, R.
Thoughts for new medical students at a new medical school
BMJ 2003;327:1430-1433 (20 December). The article is available free online.

This month's selection was brought to my attention by a good friend - Dr. I. K. Indrajit, who is with the Army Hospital in New Delhi. Thank you, Dr. Indrajit! I hope all our young medical students will appreciate this one. In fact, we hope all Deans and faculty of medical colleges will make a special effort to share this with their students.

Quote of the Month

"Knowledge is power, knowledge management is the use of power for good."

(Sir Liam Donaldson speaking at the launch of the patient safety domain of 'QualityHealthCare.org', National Patient Safety Agency, London. March 18, 2003)

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

We have added about 80 new sites in the last month and the total number of sites has crossed 2100. 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.