For years I have mentioned to academicians that literature searching and referencing skills are best taught in the undergraduate days. In the early days the response I often got was – “UG students should first study text books. They can learn all this later”. Then things changed a bit. Conferences for undergrad students were held. Students presented posters and oral talks. The ICMR STS projects penetrated further and more colleges started having more students participate. QMed was invited to conduct workshops in several events. And in every workshop the feedback from UG students was almost overwhelming. They were thrilled to have learnt these skills.
In a workshop in Puducherry a student said “You know mam, I came to this workshop because all other preconference workshops were full. But I realized that what they teach in other workshops, I will be learning in the curriculum. I am so glad that I attended this one” !
And yet in 2021, we still do not see these skills being taught as part of their regular learning. I am not even talking of a formal curriculum with examinations for this. I think UG students should have opportunities to learn these skills on a regular basis. In the western world, I have heard from librarians that they regularly offer classes right from the First Year of medical school. Students could join batches or even ask for one to one sessions.
In India, I am aware that a handful of medical colleges conduct such workshops. As far as I know, they teach these skills only to PG students. Rarely do UG students get to learn.
And at least at three places I know that the people who conduct them are people who have attended my workshop and learnt from me. I am very happy that they are carrying out this work. But – they are faculty with other job responsibilities. And I wonder whether they have the bandwidth to help everyone in their institution.
Ideally this should be the librarians’ role. We need to move towards librarians getting good at these skills and regularly teaching others.
A cursory check in PubMed for introduction of information literacy and literature searching skills for undergrad students shows around 64 articles for medical students, 55 articles for nursing and 16 articles for pharmacy students. Isn’t that a good enough number to show that we DO need to teach these skills in the UG level?
As our workshops became popular, when I mentioned that these skills should be mandatory in the student’s learning, one important response I got was – “there are not enough people trained to teach these skills, in every medical college”. Well, that was a point. But now, QMed has the answer in the form of online courses – and we need to promote these all over India – in every medical college! We seek help in reaching the right people in every institution – to ensure that every UG student of every health sciences stream learns these skills thoroughly in their UG days.
They deserve to do better in their STS projects. They deserve to learn these skills well before they enter their PG courses, in order to do a better thesis. If they go with the USMLE route – they need to demonstrate that they know these skills, rather than struggling with them. As they evolve in the profession, this will later make them to better for publications, practice and more!
#whyqmedexists #literaturesearch #medicalresearch #nursingresearch #pharmacyresearch #referencemanagement #undergraduatestudents
