Helping medical students become better doctors

When in school, I wanted to study Medicine. I could not pursue this field, for a number of personal reasons. My family humorously mentions that I got into Medicine “through the back door”. That is true - my life has just evolved in this profession.

To the extent that I recently had an opportunity to speak about introducing a change in the curriculum. 

A friend of mine - Dr Ravi, is an alumnus from my school. We have been in touch over years. He recently happened to read one of my LinkedIn posts highlighting an interesting article about ethics in authorship. He asked me if I would speak at the “Marvelous Medicine Series”.

He went on to tell me more about the lecture series. It was an initiative that was started by alumni from JIPMER, Puducherry (he is an alumnus from that college), during the Pandemic. The series became so popular that it has continued later on too. Every Wednesday they have a talk by someone on a core medical topic or on something useful for the health professions. 

I was delighted to learn about this and accepted the invitation. Dr Ravi introduced me to Dr Vidya who coordinated the show. The three of us had a quick discussion and they were happy to accept my topic:

Literature Searching Skills: An Urgent Need in the Curriculum

This event was an opportunity to appeal to a large number of doctors – and get them interested in our Mission. I had to make sure that I had the best of content and that I should definitely finish it in the allotted time, keeping people well engaged. I took a good two days to prepare for it – right from preparing a mind-map plan, to revising the slides a number of times and rehearsing the timings.

I shared with the audience – some of the observations I had made in the profession. About many students and professionals losing precious time. They did not have the exposure to the skills of structured searching and referencing. From residents struggling with their theses -  to doctors battling with correct referencing - to those who needed advanced help with their systematic review searches.

I gave them a glimpse of what these skills were and how they made a difference. Both in terms of time (national hours) saved, and about the better basis for research. I talked about QMed’s work. I told them why we felt that it was important to learn these skills right from the UG stage and not later. Finally, I asked them to connect with me to share their inputs - telling them that it was vital that we collaborated and approached the commissions and councils  together. 

I finished my presentation in the allotted 40-45 minutes and then enjoyed the discussions that followed. It was wonderful that senior faculty and practitioners appreciated the talk and agreed with this need. The chat window was flooded with comments about the need to include these skills in the UG stage. We also had related discussions - deliberated about the possibility of AI taking over in future. (Yes – we need to be open to that!). T

I now await the recording of the session, so that we could share it with a larger audience and get more people involved in our quest – getting the National Medical Commission to implement our teaching in all medical colleges. After all they have mentioned in their Foundation Course document (page 64): 

Students should be introduced to the basic use of word and power point, familiar with search engines, in performing a literature search and accessing online resources.

Links:

• About our Foundation
• About our courses
• Our e-learning courses

The Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences (SMIMS) located in Gangtok is, for QMed, a dream institution!

They were amongst the first institutions, which subscribed to our ELearning courses, when we had them hosted with Mediknit. At that time, they were the only institution that ensured that majority completed all courses. At the end of one year, they took a break. Later when we launched our courses on www.qmedcourses.in, they came back to us for two whole years.

Some of the feedback we received by participants of the program:

• I highly appreciate the initiative as this would largely enable researchers to utilize their time efficiently
• This course has provided me with the information on some minute details of research and the searching process
• I learned the skill of teaching along with learning PubMed!
• I liked how the questionnaire allows multiple attempts so that we can go back and find the answer
• The most interesting part is the distribution of timing for each subtopic
• I have been using PubMed for about 5 years and I have now learnt many features from this course that I never knew before.

Why do we call SMIMS a Dream Institution? Two of their Professors who were the main coordinators made the effort to ensure that the institution made full usage of the learning opportunities we offered. When we asked them what all they did to ensure full usage, they responded:

• They made a single point of contact in every department. This person was responsible to motivate people in the department to register and complete the course.
  
  
• They sent reminders for completion to
  
  1. The specific person in every department
  2. Next – individually to all participants
  3. Third – asked QMed to send to all
  
  
• They made it mandatory to submit the certificates for various purposes

We at QMed now want to share these methods with all colleges, showing SMIMS as a role model.

That is a great story, but….

The other side is that SMIMS, after two years of subscription have not decided to renew their access. We are waiting to discuss it further, but it brings us back to our regular challenge – “Why do institutions not consider this learning to be a must for every new batch of students and all new faculty? We are waiting to find out more from SMIMS. Once we learn, we will have to figure out more answers and rework our communications.

Till then we are very grateful to SMIMS for having been a model institution and for sharing their methodology with us.

We still hope they will change their minds and renew their access once more; this time ensuring that the undergrad medical students will also be made to do the courses.

We continue to be in the quest of finding the best way to ensure every institution’s acceptance of the reality:

“Literature Searching & Referencing are skills that need to be taught in a structured manner and must be made compulsory in the curriculum”.

Links:

• About our Foundation
• About our courses
• Our e-learning courses