Helping medical students become better doctors

From QMed: Founder story. Year 2000. An interesting workshop in a School of Dentistry

In the year 2000, I had attended an International Workshop for Medical Librarians, held in London (my first participation in an event outside India).

I had enrolled for a workshop on "Critical Appraisal Skills". That was when I also learnt about the concept of "Searching for Evidence". It was the basis for all my evolution and what I offer to teach in India today. 

I returned and looked for an online course to learn more about searching for Evidence and to my pleasant surprise found a most suitable one - "Searching the Literature for Evidence Based Medicine". It was conducted by librarians in the United States in collaboration with the Medical Library Association. I finished it and got good grades too! (Oh yes – I also paid $150 to do this - that is a lot in Indian Rupees).

The three librarians who taught - Julia, Julie and Connie - were fabulous. I had the pleasure of meeting them in conferences later and could express my gratitude to them.

Interestingly, soon after, in the same year, I got to know about an "Evidence Based Dentistry" event in a small town in a neighbouring state. It was obviously meant for dentists, but I called to ask if I could attend - explaining the work I did. The institution was generous enough to invite me to attend. 

In 2000, in India, the concepts of Evidence Based Medicine / Dentistry had not made deep inroads. And when I attended the event, I learnt some interesting facts: 

1. I was the first person to register for the workshop
2. The hosts were not getting enrolments (many apparently thought that Evidence Based Dentistry was all about Forensic Dentistry!)
3. So they had to request the University to ask every institution to send people. As a result they got nearly 100 registrations
4. When it came to "Searching for studies" - I knew the step by step search methods - enough to help teach all

For me it was an "aha moment" - where I figured how much more I could teach and help in the health professions. 

It took another seven years for me to set up our Foundation and begin work formally. Till then - there had been lots more learning and experimenting. The learning continues. Always.

Vasundhara and I have been friends for years. Early in our professional lives, when both were health science librarians, we used to meet and discuss our jobs and work and plan our progress.

She later moved out of the health sciences domain and worked in a Government library in our city for several years. She teamed up with a couple of professional colleagues and together they started an informal group of librarians - called "BKC Knowledge Network". Over the years the team organized several small events, where she and I met. 

Then on the 5th of May, we had her visit QMed. Having recently retired from her position, she was exploring opportunities to stay engaged in the profession and I had invited her over to learn about our work in depth. 

Vasu spent the whole day with us and we had a lovely day. I explained a lot about our work and so did my colleagues Dipti and Fatima. 

She wrote this note for us and made our day!

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*LIS - Library & Information Sciences 

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