Education India Project #14455

Helping medical students become better doctors

by QMed Knowledge Foundation

Project Report | Dec 8, 2021
The Light at the End of a Tunnel - the First Glimpse

By Vasumathi Sriganesh | Founder

Session at AIIMS Kalyani

In end November, we had a first glimpse of the proverbial light at the end of a tunnel! We have been dreaming of the day when our courses are made mandatory right from the Undergraduate stage of all Health Science Courses. We have very often experienced that students studying at this level learn what we teach – literature searching & reference management – very easily. And we want all students to have this exposure so that their research orientation is that much easier. Even the youngest student who attended our workshops has mentioned “I wish I had learnt this earlier”!

And in the end of November we got an email from AIIMS Guwahati – one of our registered institutions that they wanted to provide access to their MBBS students. We were delighted. The next day we got a similar request from AIIMS Kalyani. Both institutions have mentioned that they would make the first two basic courses mandatory for all their MBBS students. This is a great start.

The final light that we wish to see at the end of the tunnel is when all institutions (medical, dental, nursing, physiotherapy and more) make these courses mandatory for their UG students. We have just entered the first part of this tunnel and have a journey to go through.

On the 4^th of December, I was in AIIMS Kalyani and had the pleasure of addressing the MBBS students who were just being registered. I explained some basics of searching and then gave them an orientation about our courses website. It was a great experience – a live session after more than a year. The students were interactive and enjoyed the session too!

We request your best wishes for a quick progress to cover many more institutions.

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Nov 23, 2021
Medical students authoring systematic reviews - our mentoring experience

By Vasumathi Sriganesh | Founder

In May 2021 a young doctor - Vinayak approached QMed. He had completed his medical degree and experienced that it was difficult to get mentors if he wanted to author a systematic review. He asked us if he could work on a collaborative project with us where QMed would take care of its major area of helping with the search strategies and he would coordinate with senior mentors and help students to author reviews.

We started off in earnest. We currently have two groups of authors - medical students - working on two separate reviews. Vinayak created groups, invited them to apply, spoke with them, screened their applications and chose them. He coordinated with doctors who promised to be mentors. Two groups working on separate topics, buzzed with activity. One group is currently at the data extraction stage and another in the screening stage.

And yet - we learned some lessons:

1. We need to have still better process to ensure that students learn the entire searching process through our courses and then only carry out the search for their review topic. In the current groups we discovered that some went through the courses fully, some partially, and none checked with us about their strategies

2. We need to factor their examination months and plan projects accordingly. It turned out that from November students get busy with exam preparations and will not be available till the end of February

We learnt that even with a very enthusiastic and sincere coordinator like Vinayak, we needed to be more alert both in our planning and in our operations, in new projects. We know it of course, but this experience just reinforced it!

We are working towards better systems for 2022. We want to make a big difference to medical students!

A request:

November 30 is Giving Tuesday. Do note that donations given on Nov 30 will be matched!

GlobalGiving is hosting a $1 million giveaway to our community on November 30, 2021!

Do consider asking one or more friends to donate to QMed's project

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Nov 9, 2021
Experimenting with webinars for participants of our courses

By Vasumathi Sriganesh | Founder

Our E-learning courses have been available since June 2020. We are constantly exploring how we can do more for those registered on www.qmedcourses.in for all our courses - because it is important that they finish all of them and learn as much as they can. (The two free courses are very basic)

So far we had reasonably frequent webinar sessions - separately for each institution and for all those registered as individuals. In addition we have had focused sessions for individuals and small groups - at their request. We observed that small institutions had a larger percentage attending such events. However it still means that the number of individuals in each session has been small.

We tried something new in October. On the 23rd, we had a session that was open to all registered participants of our courses. Around 30 registered but only around 10 showed up. Only one of them asked questions and gave feedback. What was it that made others silent? Why did around 20 not show up?

Obviously lots of different factors. I am not listing them, but after brainstorming, we have made a fresh approach and I would rather share that.

Our new plan - Have a session every two weeks

We hope that a consistent and predictable schedule will make more people join in. We have planned sessions for the 2nd Friday and 4th Sat of every month. (We are open to changing this based on requests from majority)

Also - we have now started to ask participants what they would like us to cover. We have put in around ten options from which we have asked them to select up to three choices. We have also asked them if they would like anything else covered. The first of the newly planned events will be on November 12, 2021. We are sending out mailers today. We hope that the new plan will gradually encourage lots more participation.

Do wish us well!

A request - On the 30th of November is Giving Tuesday. GlobalGiving as always offers a matching donation to the donations we receive. It would be great if you could help us by asking just one friend to make a donation to our project. And if you choose to make one too, that would be icing on the cake :)

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