Donor Connect: Our fortnightly updates to donors
Dear Donors - In case you have missed any of our mailers, you could check this page and catch up. And if you are someone who has stumbled upon this page for the first time, we invite you to join us in our journey. Give us a donation to sustain our work. Contribute your time/ expertise. Connect us with people who matter - in the National Medical Commission / ICMR or any of the Councils. Help us reach medical / nursing / dental / pharmacy and other colleges. In short - Become a part of the history we are creating! We welcome you!
Dec 31, 2024: Participant Feedback: 12 Years of experience, yet new insights
It was ICMR once again! But this time it was about a workshop funded by the ICMR. This was at NIPER, Guwahati. The ICMR has recently funded institutions for conducting week long workshops for those interested in authoring systematic reviews.
NIPER Guwahati was the first such institution to ensure that Literature searching – which is the foundation of a systematic review, was allotted a full day. And I was privileged to conduct this workshop!
The session had about 28 participants from institutions in the North Eastern Region. In addition around 22 NIPER students & researchers were also present.
An eye opening feedback was from a participant – Ahmad Rehan was – “It was excellent, I came to know about all this, after my 12 years of experience.” !
I was wondering how to estimate the human hours he lost in the 12 years, without this knowledge!
We hope the ICMR will ensure that our workshops and ELearning can make inroads for all systematic review training and authoring, in India. The difference will be amazing!
Nov 19, 2024: A researcher’s story: What Raghul Durairaj felt about QMedCourses
Date: Tuesday November 19, 2024
Category: Health Sector story
Keywords: QMedCourses, Researcher's story
This is a story about a research scholar who does “Secondary research” – that is research about research publications. Across the world “Information Specialists” (most often librarians) have a strong role in such research. They help to search all synonyms and variations. They help in searching several databases and lots more. All this work helps to ensure that no publication is missed and evidence is created from all available data.
Raghul Durairaj a researcher with a Masters in Public Health, went through our courses and shares his story:
Two years ago, I embarked on evidence synthesis projects, participating in four systematic reviews across India. We never consulted an information specialist for our search strategies, unaware of their vital role.
I learned about the importance of information specialists while proposing a Cochrane systematic review, which mandates their inclusion. A friend introduced me to the QMed Knowledge Foundation and Ms. Vasumathi Sriganesh, who became pivotal in my research journey.
Eager to enhance my skills, I sought training from Ms. Vasumathi. With an upcoming systematic review under the “Early Career Research Grant” from RSTMH, UK, I completed QMed’s online courses on search strategy development before diving into my project.
Initially, I planned to rely on the QMed team for the entire search strategy but was encouraged to take the lead. With their support, I independently developed and translated a search strategy for six databases, overcoming my initial hesitation.
I’m proud that my peer-reviewed search strategy was crafted with guidance from an Indian information specialist. The process took three weeks, and while I know I’m not yet ready to tackle every search independently, I now feel confident in collaborating effectively with specialists.
Our team saved time during article screening thanks to Ms. Vasumathi’s guidance in extracting articles from non-traditional databases like Google Scholar, ensuring we didn’t miss critical studies.
My experience with the QMed team has been transformative. I look forward to future collaborations and hope more researchers in India will seek out information specialists to elevate the quality of evidence-based research.
We at QMed hope to help and mentor many such researchers!
Aug 30, 2024: Program Update: “You have more faith in my abilities than I do”
The workshops at the KJ Somaiya Medical College and at the TNMC were both conducted with the grant money from Pfizer that we could not utilize earlier. Both events had great participation from students and faculty of the respective institutions.
The Whatsapp group of the TNMC was full of messages after the workshop thanking the organizer Dr Renuka Munshi as well as Vasumathi Sriganesh for the workshop. One Dr Shubham asked for a workshop on Systematic Reviews & Meta analyses sometime in the future. Vasumathi responded saying that her expertise stops with the sound literature searching that is required and she is not trained in the rest of the process
She was very touched when – Dr Surbhi commented – “I don’t think the day is far when you will be penning down a fantastic Systematic Review – that will speak volumes on your expertise!”
For which she responded “You have more faith in my abilities than I do”.
Bang came another response from Dr Armaity – “We all do, Madam”
TNMC docs – you have won Vasumathi’s heart!
Jun 20, 2024: The Health Sector Needs Story: an Urgent Upgrade in Learning about Systematic Reviews
In my last story, (https://www.qmed.ngo/donor-connect/ – May 30) , I had written about an important progress in India. I had mentioned that the ICMR has started providing funding for:
- Authors of systematic reviews
- And for the conducting of courses for authors, to write good reviews.
I had also stressed upon the need for very systematic search strategies, for such work and that the majority in India are not trained in this activity. We at QMed not only offer such help and training; but we are also constantly upgrading our knowledge so that we can offer the best of help.
Soon after I wrote this, I happened to attend a webinar where a couple of librarians from the University of Michigan shared their experiences of a study they conducted. The webinar was titled:
Behind the Scenes of “A Critical Analysis of Peer Reviewer Comments on Systematic Review Search Strategies”
The webinar very interestingly was about – “An analysis of the quality of search peer review at the manuscript stage”
Most people know something about Peer reviewing of a journal article. When it comes to systematic reviews, the peer reviewing is not only about the study reporting.
A very important need is the peer reviewing of the search strategies carried out and how they have been reported.*
As we mentioned in our last story, for a systematic review, the search strategies are “The Foundation” of a systematic review. Additionally well done reviews are updated at reasonably regular intervals with inclusion and re-analyses of new study results. That is how evidence stays current!
The study done by the librarians showed how often search strategies were not done in detail, often reported very poorly, peer reviewers missed errors and in the end, “less than desirable quality reviews” actually made it to publication!
This is not healthy if we want health care to be evidence based. That is a serious problem!
Now we might think – “If this is the condition in the developed nations, it is not surprising that it is similar or poorer in India”.
My answer to this is – if the IT industry from India could become world class, why not our medical publications?
Instead of consoling ourselves, we need to wake up! We need to think seriously about upgrading ourselves and our publications. We need to
- Carry out and publish great primary research
- And from these – synthesize and generate world class secondary research, producing the best available evidence at any point of time!
We have the “population of patients” – to conduct lots of research. We have the brains in the medical field. Why should we let the lacuna of methodology affect our publications?
Our call to action:
- Do join us and learn – at www.qmedcourses.in
- Better still – please get your institution to subscribe and provide access to all faculty and students.
The slides presented at this talk are available athttps://guides.lib.umich.edu/ld.php?content_id=76872906
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