Helping medical students become better doctors

In our July 9 communication of Donor Connect, mentioned about the THIRST For AIIMS project being on the “take off mode”. July turned out to be great for us as we did sessions in AIIMS Raipur (July 14), AIIMS Guwahati (July 20) and AIIMS Kalyani (July 22).

We had varied experiences with each institution as we planned the events. AIIMS Raipur gave us only 1.5 hours of time. AIIMS Guwahati gave three hours and Kalyani gave two three hour slots. We had offered a full day session to all.

But over years I have figured out how to handle sessions of varying length, how much to teach and more. Importantly I convey one message to all. That there is a very structured method of literature searching and referencing and that if people invest time in learning these skills they gain a large time saving in their professional life. Most often at the end of the session, people themselves express their feelings – that they need longer sessions!

In every institution I had discussions with people about how we can make sure that majority in their institution finish all of our courses.

An interesting addition was that many participants asked me about how I could speak and present very well. The second question that was interesting was – how I had the energy to speak the whole day without losing energy and keep an audience engaged. These questions made me feel good.

I had to first acknowledge the “genetic element” – that my father and grandfather were great teachers and orators and that their skills had crept into my genes. Regarding the energy element, I told them it was a mix of passion, love of teaching, and most recently having gone through NLP processes that added extra energy into me!

In addition to the above workshops, July offered the opportunity for a lecture at NIPER – National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Guwahati.

August 2023

Things peaked and through the Thirst for AIIMS grant, we did one workshop in AIIMS Rae Bareli (August 8), two in AIIMS Bhopal (11^th and 12^th) and one in AIIMS Jodhpur. All of them were full day workshops too. One of the workshops in Bhopal had two MBBS students, one who was in his first year! And he answered the toughest quiz question correctly. These are “Aha” moments for us – as we are able to convince the concerned people that these skills need to be introduced in the UG curriculum and students are capable of learning them

With this we have done events in six AIIMS institutions and need to do four more. We are sure of completing these pretty soon.

Links:

• Featured in a news article in "Amarujala" on 9th Aug 2023
• Instagram post from AIIMS Bhopal - check the pictures