Science, Stories and Sevagram: A Physician-Teacher's Reflections
Reading Time: 2 minutesDr. KV Desikan. Ninety-one-year-old man. This morning, I spent an hour and a half with him—forgetting our age differences—and spoke to him on a variety of topics—his tryst with Sevagram, his leprosy work, his medical maladies and how he copes with them, and the modern doctors. With organisational and administrative skills and energy as enormous … Read more
Reading Time: 2 minutesVarun Bhargava (VB) came to Sevagram in 1969. He belonged to the first batch of MGIMS. Four years later, he graduated from MGIMS, went to PGI, Chandigarh to earn his MD (Medicine) and established a highly successful practice in Nagpur. His 100-bed hospital—driven by ethics and science— evokes a level of respect and admiration that … Read more
Reading Time: 2 minutesFour hundred thousand patients in the hospitals in the United States die every year because of medical errors—from mistakes that could have been prevented. The BMJ article, published three days ago, says that “if the medical error was a disease, it would rank as the third leading cause of death in the US.” Preventable medical … Read more
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhen I began practising Medicine at MGIMS, whenever I ran into a medical problem, which I thought I could not solve, I would seek a super specialist’s help. This indeed made sense. After all, their years of training and rich experience would help me order the best test, choose the drug that works or pick … Read more
Reading Time: 2 minutesDid I stir up a hornet’s nest when I tried to examine the benefits and harms of mammography? I’m glad I did. I might have been less than generous in my remarks about mammography, but that does not diminish my unqualified admiration of those who believe that it works. I am happy that some of … Read more
Reading Time: 2 minutesRecently, I was part of a team that was caring for a woman with breast cancer. “Would I have fared better had I undergone mammography when I turned 50?”, she asked me. She is right because a neighbouring medical school is offering mammography on wheels—bringing technology to the doorsteps of rural women who cannot access … Read more
Reading Time: 2 minutesWorldwide, women have shaped medical education, healthcare, and research. They now make up half of all medical schools— at MGIMS, in a dozen batches (86, 87, 90-94, 98-99, 2001, 2011 and 2014) girls outnumbered boys. They have led the institute, the department, and the units. They have also published papers that have changed the face … Read more
Reading Time: < 1 minuteI chanced to read Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s profile on Simon and Schuster website this evening. “Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is the author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia … Read more
Reading Time: < 1 minuteMrs Mani Behere—passed away today evening at her home in Sevagram. For over a decade, she had worked in our department of Psychiatry as a faculty. A kind-hearted woman—always sporting a genuine smile on her face, and exuding warmth and love—she fought a long battle with metastatic breast cancer and endured her illness with fortitude. … Read more