"Residents in Surgery do not get enough time for research" is what we hear ever so often. Well, Aditi who recently finished her Residency in a medical school in our city made time to do the right research for her thesis. Here is her story
Thesis writing, for a postgraduate resident is a compulsory element in the program. It is also a very interesting part of the course, but for most of us we learn that it can be interesting, rather late. When it is almost the time for submission. Many of us feel that we could have learned more, if it had all been more structured.
One of the very interesting learning for the thesis activity is “Literature searching and Referencing”. I feel that if only we could have invested time for this, around the second, third and fourth post, then our thesis writing can become much better. Residency programs are of three years duration and each set of six months is called “a post”. We have six posts in all.
Luckily for me, I was introduced to QMed and Vasumathi ma’am a little early – in my second year. They helped me in discovering this interesting side of thesis writing. Finding the right literature, from the right sources turned out to be so very important. In the Indian programs, we are hardly exposed to learning this in our curriculum. And many residents find literature through trial and error searching. I learned about QMed and Mrs Vasumathi from a faculty member and chose to learn the right skills from them. They not only taught me how to search and how to use a reference manager to store my results and then cite them in my thesis, but also supported me with my doubts and queries as I worked on my thesis.
Looking back I feel that it would have been wonderful if my co-residents and I had learned all this during our undergraduate (medical school) days, or at least during internship. If we had, we would have been aware of how deep and intricate the entire process of thesis writing is. We would have put in more steady, sustained efforts. It would have been even greater learning. The need to do a thesis, I believe, is a huge opportunity to get introduced to doing research correctly. In spite of having crazy clinical schedules I believe I grabbed the opportunity to learn. And am thankful for how much I learned.
QMed guides students and researchers at all levels and I wish more people could get the benefits of learning from them. Vasumathi ma’am has been a tremendous and dependable support in teaching me how to find the right literature.
I’m deeply obliged to QMed for guiding me in this aspect of research methodology.
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Aditi shared with us that based on all articles she read - thanks to our guiding her in searching, she made sure that she took the right samples of patients and did all she could to make her research original. This unlike the regular trend amongst hard-pressed-for-time-residents who tend to take an older thesis and do their studies with minor modifications
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Help us reach out to more such residents. If they learn these skills they are getting themselves ready to offer Evidence Based treatment options to their patients. So far we have reached out to many, and we are happy to share that 23 participants have enrolled for our ELearning course too!
A donation of $10 or more helps us reach out our skills across the country. Thank you for your donation/s and for spreading the word
QMed is delighted to announce, that in the second week of May 2018, we launched our first E-Learning course - "Mastering PubMed: Basics". We are very grateful to Mediknit, who has partnered with us, providing us with a Learning Management System, helping us with promotions and more. Do check out our web page www.qmed.ngo/elearning-reg
With this development, our most popular workshop will now be available to those who wish to learn at their pace and convenience. They can watch the teaching videos any number of times as they learn, and they have to answer quizzes and an assessment, both designed to help them learn in depth. Not only that, for a whole year, after they sign up, QMed will mentor them further. Mentoring will be in the form of:
We had been working at creating and hosting an ELearning course for long, and had run into several glitches. But ... we did not give up! And are very happy that we finally succeeded.
We thank you for your continuous support with your donations - a part of which always went towards this project. Do wish us the best for more - because - very simply, your donations then reach out to lots more people!
And if you know any one in the health profession who may find our course useful, do share this link with them - www.qmed.ngo/elearning-reg
Thank you!
Vasumathi
(*Mediknit is an Indian company that offers an E-Learning platform and support for any organization teaching healthcare related topics)
I was worried about the literature searching requirement, as I had never done a systematic search at any time. And then I came to know about QMed and Vasumathi through a senior doctor colleague. He was so confident about her involvement in the project once taken, that he assured me that QMed and Vasumathi in particular will meet my needs.
Soon I called her.
Then started everyday phone / skype calls, asking for help with every little thing, whether it was related to searching / referencing or not. I would ask her questions, and even more than me she was eager to find those things as quickly as possible!. If she couldn’t find them using all the resources she had, she would come back quickly and honestly to tell me that we needed to do something else!.
It was so good to have her to share my tension, difficulty and the shoulder to put my worries on, when I could not handle things sometimes – she was very understanding and reassuring. She would assure me that I really was already doing a lot of work, that we were “almost there”, and that I should do “this” (something specific), this might help… etc… very polite suggestions but they were all worth considering. The help continued till the last day and till the last hour of submission.
Of course my tutor was there to correct me at every step but Vasumathi (supported by her colleagues) was always there for me. Thanks a lot for everything! And hope I do research in near future with your support!!
