This is indeed a sad and agonizing moment for me to write on MVR. The light that illuminated the department of Biochemistry and indeed the MGIMS campus has suddenly gone out. What happened was absolutely incredible and inconceivable. Sevagram is stunned and shocked, and so am I. Beyond words. I am still unable to fathom …
Sevagram
Tryst with Gandhi Ashram
I wish I could have captured his photograph. Two days back, I was strolling along the Dean Office road at Sevagram where I live. I stopped when I saw a teenager- with a bucket in right hand and a sleeping bag in the left- running towards me. Panting, and perspiring profusely, he gathered his breath …
MGIMS Students and Anji Center
Ask any old student about their training at MGIMS, and the Anji camp will certainly top the list of their most memorable moments. So where is Anji, what happens there and what makes it so special for MGIMS alumni? Anji is a small village located 22 km north-west of Sevagram. Since 1981, each winter, an …
iPad at the point of care
Smartphones and iPads are the future of medicine. In 2004 we introduced hospital information system in our teaching hospital. We realized that one day, we shall move from the desktops to the laptops, and subsequently to iPads and smartphones. Digital technology, to be effective, needs to be at the point of care. It cannot distance …
Down Melody Lane
MGIMS students, interns, residents, lab technicians, healthcare workers, teachers- yesterday night they all teamed seamlessly to deliver more than the musical night had promised- entertaining and enthralling the audience with super-hit Hindi filmy sangeet. Little wonder that they kept the audience- all ears to the musical melodies- spellbound for full three hours. So, when the singers kept …
1985 batch reunion
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it …
Physicians meet- only to part
Reminiscences- this weekend was filled with them. On December 19- thirty years since the first resident obtained her MD Medicine from the institute -a third of the hundred residents from the department of medicine gathered in Sevagram. Beginning 1979, exactly hundred residents had completed their MD training in the Medicine department, a number that aroused …
Medicine is Skin Deep
Sunday morning. I was rounding with my residents. We moved as a group to the ICU, stopping at each bed. A middle-aged woman with a heart attack. A boy fighting malaria. A young man battling HIV and TB. We checked their vitals, reviewed test results, and adjusted their treatment. At bed 7, a young woman …
MD Theses sans acknowledgments
The MD theses, finally, are over. Focused research questions, great introductions, meticulous methods, well-laid out results and structured discussions. But what the theses won’t have this year is their most readable section – acknowledgements. The section, guides loved to leaf through in the close confines of their office. The section that boosted their self-esteem. The …
Getting doctors to the villages: Will compulsion work?
Despite more than a half century of proclamations on primary healthcare, most rural facilities in India continue to lack enough providers, equipment and infrastructure to offer effective and efficient care. In the latest effort to address this inequitable distribution the union health and family welfare minister announced a plan requiring doctors to practise in rural …