Are the medical professionals so poor, as a BMJ editorial asked long ago, that they cannot afford to buy their pen, pad or pizza? And are the doctors so ignorant about the new therapies and new drug discoveries that they need help from medical representatives and the drug industry? Very few doctors learn during their …
Research Question: How to Define? How to Ask?
A well-focussed research question is one of the most important components of the research study. Here is a link to the PowerPoint presentation on YouTube:
1985 batch reunion
โIt 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 leisurely with my residents. We moved as a group to the patientโs bedside in our ICU and saw several patients: a middle-aged woman with acute myocardial infarction, a boy heavily parasitized with plasmodium falciparum and a young man fighting a dual attack of HIV and TB. We looked at their …
Violence in hospitals
Last week, a 50 year old previously healthy man died in our hospital following a massive stroke. The computed tomography scan showed that he had bled deep within his brain, the blood not letting the brain perform its functions. Death, especially sudden, evokes a medley of emotions- shock, denial, accusation, frustration, anger and grief. Not …
A tale of two consultations
A couple of days ago, I happened to see my friendโs grandchild. The three-month old baby, the childโs mother noted, had slow wandering eye movements and did not seem to focus well. The child had albinism- a disorder that affects colour of hair, skin and eyes. The mother was getting jittery. Will my son be …
Are Indiaโs best hospitals Indiaโs best?
On 15 November 2009, The Week released its annual list of the countryโs best hospitals, ranked by various specialties like cardiology, oncology, orthopedics, gastroenterology, ophthalmology and paediatrics. The ranks are based on 14-city survey conducted by The Week in collaboration with IMRB, the market research agency, among 10 specialists across 10 specializations and 1190 general …
Mammograms – much ado about nothing?
A day before, I wrote that we should not sell mammography as a screening modality in resource limited setting. Todayโs Annals of Internal Medicine carries recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) on screening for breast cancer in general population. Interestingly, USPSTF in 2002 had advocated for routine screening mammography at age 40; …
Mammography in a rural teaching hospital
A year before, our hospital acquired a mammography unit, aimed at early detection of breast cancer in women. We did so at the behest of Medical Council of India (MCI) – provision of mammography is one of the several prerequisites for granting approval for MD (Radiodiagnosis) post-graduation programme. Eager to win MCI approval, we spent …