A family celebrates the birth of a child and it often appears that in no time the child grows up. That is the feeling we got this month when we completed 15 years of our registration!
What have we achieved in the last 15 years? Delivered around 520 lectures, conducted 245 workshops, launched our ELearning platform – and registered more than 5000 participants and overall reached out to more than 35000 health sciences students & professionals
We have had excellent feedback from majority who completed our courses – stressing that these courses must be in the curriculum! Individually any doctor we speak to agrees that the curriculum does not include online searching & referencing skills and that these ARE lacunae
Yet, when we approach an institution / body to offer our courses, there is hesitation in taking instant action. Why? We brainstormed about this and what we all agreed is:
“They don’t know what they don’t know”.
Right from decision makers in the health sciences education, to policy makers, there is a lacuna in understanding that there IS a structured method of searching the online literature and a right methodology to reference correctly. And that they MUST teach these skills so that every student learns the skills before he/she becomes a health professional. When they are scarcely aware about a structured method, they obviously do not prioritize this teaching!
We continuously think of what more we can do to solve this problem.
We explored collaborations to reach out to all educational institutions, and started a “top down approach” by meeting Vice Chancellors, Secretaries of the Govt and more. We have told them about our desire to make a positive change. We have offered to share our knowledge and skills so that students and professionals save lots of time. We explained how they can then carry out better research. We stress that this will be a major way to ensure a return on the investment their institutions make, in online information resources. As we wait for responses about the next steps, we will keep the connections going.
Meanwhile, we are also strengthening our offerings:
- Creating more courses
- Updating the existing ones as the platforms evolve (PubMed & Mendeley)
- Explore how we can use technologies to enhance the courses
As I write this update, we have made a MAJOR change in our courses. We have added lots more questions for the final assessment of each course. Now participants can keep attempting the assessment and work at several new questions which generate randomly and improve their skills with more testing. They can do unlimited attempts and download a “best score” certificate!
We have “miles to go before we sleep” – to ensure that this learning becomes part of the health sciences curricula. We invite you to be a “QMed Ally” – work with us, share ideas, inputs, donate / help us raise funds until our work sustains itself. Importantly – please help us reach the National Medical Commission.
