QMedCONNECT Newsletter: July 2016

Dear friends

July got us travelling! A trip to Lucknow to conduct a workshop at Medicon 2016 and at the King George Medical University and then on to Puducherry to conduct a workshop at Sri Manakula Vinayagar Medical College & Hospital and then at a UG conference - SIMSCON 2016 at the same venue. We also delivered eight lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Mumbai, one at KEM Hospital and one at Apollo Hospital, Chennai.

We go a wonderful feedback from a UG participant - Khanda Shahbaz, at Medicon, who wrote:

I really regret - "why I did not know this before?" What our guides tell us is "hey go to PubMed and search for relevant articles!" I would like to ask them "Hey where were you (when we struggled)? Why didn't you show us this before? Did you even know it?" Hats off to the QMed team. Additionally I would be glad if similar workshop is conducted at our institution.

We are, over the years sure that this feedback represents the scenario in our medical education system. It is true that majority of educators do not know / teach what we do. What is however really appreciable is that once they listen to our lectures / attend our workshops, they all are nice enough to admit it. The issue is that they need to have an exposure to our training, or else, "they don't know what they don't know".

We cover another such story by an MBBS student, which is featured in our blog excerpt below.

We had another "first" this month - I delivered my first Webinar on literature searching, thanks to the All India Ophthalmological Society. The recording of the webinar will soon be available on their website - www.aios.in

Vasumathi Sriganesh

From our Blog

Meet the team - Kunal Marathe, Meet Jain, Tanmay Londhe and Ujjwal Sharnagat through this blog post. The team won the first prize at the event - "Quest Unplugged". And they have given credit to the literature searching techniques they learned from us as being one of the factors that was tremendously useful! View the post here

Did You Know

What is Creative Commons?

We keep hearing about open access and creative commons. What exactly is Creative Commons? It is a license by which the author retains the copyright (unlike what happens when s/he publishes in a journal - the article becomes the journal's copyright). And public who read the author's works have a right to copy, acknowledging the author's work. This way research is shared with a much wider audience. There are six types of CC licenses. This infographic by Wiley Publishers explains all of them clearly.

To read more of our "Do you know" posts, do check out our blog posts on these

Interesting Reading

Herur A, et al
Refining the Journal Club Presentations of Postgraduate Students in Seven Clinical Departments for Better Evidence-based Practice. Ann Med Health Sci Res. 2016 May-Jun;6(3):185-9 PMID:27398252

The article describes a study in Bagalkot, South India, where seven departments of a medical college, gave tests to postgraduate students to evaluate their understanding of evidence based practice. They were given the test before a journal club, and then after a hands on training on the steps of EBP, and then a week later. They found that test scores improved immediately after the training and also a week later. Will more institutions add this practice of training in EBP?

To see a collection of articles we have covered earlier, click here

From QMed’s Calendar

Talks on Literature Search / Referencing & Citing at

• College of Physicians and Surgeons, Mumbai - 4th, 12th, 15th, 25th July.

• Webinar- AIOS- 21st July

• Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai - 26th July

• Apollo Hospital, Chennai- 29th July.

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Workshops@Institutions

• Half-day interactive workshop on Literature search and Reference Management for a group of 26 PG and faculty members at King George Medical University, Lucknow on 14th July.

• Full-day hands-on workshop on Literature Search and Reference Management for a group of 26 PG and faculty members at SMVMCH, Puducherry on 27th July.

Workshops for UG students

• Half-day hands-on workshop on PubMed Basics at the annual under-graduate student conference Medicon 2016 for group of 18 participants on 13th July.

• Full-day hands-on workshop on Literature Search and Reference Management for a group of 15 under-graduate students at SIMSCON 2016 (SMVMCH, Puducherry) on 28th July.

Workshops@QMed

Half-day workshop on Reference Management with Mendeley for a group of three PG students from Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai.

Participant Feedback

1. I really regret "why I did not know this before?" What our guides show us is "hey go to PubMed and search for relevant articles! I would like to ask them "Hey where were you? Why didn't you show us this before or did you even know it?" Hatsoff to the QMed team. Additionally I would be glad if similar workshop is conducted at our institution. - Khanda Shahbaz, UG student @ Medicon 2016.

2. Loved it!! Would have stayed in the stone age (with regards to PubMed) had I not attended the workshops! Loved the resource persons!! - Sriram Prasad, UG student @ SIMSCON 2016

3. In the starting I was just thinking that this workshop is a wastage of time. But my opinion changed. It is very good and the workshop will be very helpful in the thesis work.- Dr Chetan Chauhan, SMVMCH, Puducherry