Helping medical students become better doctors

We have shared several success stories. But behind these, we face several challenges and we have shared some of them on and off. I feel that we need to share these more regularly, for two reasons.

1. We are trying to expand our work and challenges are almost an integral part of any expansion
2. We hope to get ideas and suggestions from you. 

So from now, I will be sending some emails with challenges that we face. I am working at getting many success stories too and they will, as usual reach you, to let you taste the successes too!

Recently I delivered two lectures - one on literature searching and one on reference management, at a University. About 150 people attended these. Around 30 were from a scientific research department, a few were senior faculty, and the majority were postgraduate residents. A very senior official told me that these residents were resistant to learning anything beyond what was mandated! That came as a surprise to me. I happened to notice that during my talks, they hardly participated. It was the research department team that was very interactive. 

It would be easy to say that once the skills we teach are mandated in the curriculum, residents would pay more attention and want to learn. But I think two things are important for what we teach to be well received. 

1. It is not just about mandating this teaching in the curriculum; it has to be started in the medical school days. That is the time that students are in a "learning mode" . During residency they are all in the "patient care" mode and while they do have to study a lot, time is a serious pressure. If they had the fundamentals very clear in their learning days, additional learning is much easier at this stage.
   
   
2. It also depends on how the faculty in institutions put things across to them. If they themselves have not learned these skills and they have not done enough of researching in their careers, they would subconsciously not stress the importance of this learning. It is important for the Councils, Journal Editors and similar bodies to lay stress on these skills being vital. 

How do we get this learning into the medical school curriculum? And how do we find the right faculty who would do what they can, to push this? Any ideas or suggestions on these points? I would welcome them. I realize that QMed has a more serious advocacy role to play, than I had thought of in our early days. 

Please do write to us at info@qmed.ngo if you could give us any ideas or suggestions. Thank you so much!