Better Search Skills - Better Healthcare for India

I would like to share a story of the year 2000. It actually is a part of the genesis of QMed. In that year, I had attended my first ever International Conference (the ICML or International Congress on Medical Librarianship). That year it was in London. I also attended a preconference workshop on “Critical Appraisal Skills” by a well known Informationist Prof  Andrew B. I have no hesitation in saying that this was a turning point in my career. I not only learnt the basics of Critical Appraisal, but for the first time, I understood that one could search the literature to retrieve only Evidence based publications.

On my return, I checked for online courses in this area and was thrilled to discover one – “Searching the Literature for Evidence Based Medicine”. I immediately enrolled for it (paying a princely $100 or $120 – I can’t exactly remember). It ran for a few weeks. It was a self paced ELearning course. The instructors were three librarians from the US & UK – all excellent. And after this – I have constantly learnt more and more on this topic.

Another interesting happening immediately after – The College of Dental Sciences at Davanagere, Karnataka announced a 1.5 day workshop on “Evidence Based Dentistry”. It was (obviously) for dentists. But I called the department and told them my background and they invited me to attend. At the event, I learnt that I was the first person to register for the course!  (Not very surprising for the year 2000). Apparently the organizers had to appeal to the VC of the RGUHS to ensure enough participation.

What I enjoyed most was obviously the literature searching session. I was the only one who knew enough about searching PubMed to find relevant literature and evidence based literature. There were two International faculty from Europe – and they had only used Medline on CDs and were not familiar with PubMed. So everything they wanted to do – I had to “translate” to PubMed. It was fun to see PG students watching me in awe.

Well – this is only to highlight that in India, we have not given enough importance to literature searching. Not just in the year 2000 – and earlier, but even now. We need to do more. And that is what we at QMed are relentlessly pursuing. Ensuring that Literature Searching (and Referencing) are taught in all health sciences institutions. With True Passion!

The Violin Prodigy:
A young violinist once asked the world’s greatest teacher to judge his talent. After his passionate performance, the master simply said, “You lack the fire.” Heartbroken, the young man quit music and succeeded in business. Years later, he met the teacher again and asked how he had known he wasn’t meant for music. The teacher replied, “I tell everyone that—they quit if they lack the fire. If you had the fire, you wouldn’t have listened.” Lesson: True passion doesn’t wait for approval; it burns despite rejection.

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Links:

• QMedCourses
• QMed Foundation