Donor Connect: Our fortnightly updates to donors
Dear Donors - In case you have missed any of our mailers, you could check this page and catch up. And if you are someone who has stumbled upon this page for the first time, we invite you to join us in our journey. Give us a donation to sustain our work. Contribute your time/ expertise. Connect us with people who matter - in the National Medical Commission / ICMR or any of the Councils. Help us reach medical / nursing / dental / pharmacy and other colleges. In short - Become a part of the history we are creating! We welcome you!
May 1, 2024: Program Update: THIRST for AIIMS – 10 Institutions completed
In April 2023, we received an Educational Grant from Pfizer to do our workshops and offer our ELearning courses in 10 AIIMS. We did six between July and August. We finished the last four later – Nov 7 in AIIMS Bathinda, Jan 29 in Bibinagar, Feb 24 in Bhubaneswar and April 11 in Mangalagiri.
It was a lovely experience running the program in ten AIIMS in the country. Apart from the fact that we had great feedback (you could see short video clips here), we ourselves learnt a lot – we got better and better at planning and executing every event.
But the biggest learning for us is – how difficult it could be to get an institution to say yes to take up our offer … to help them save time, and to lay a strong foundation for their research activities.
Even when we offered it for free, through this grant.
As we deliberated and applied thoughts, it boils down to what we call the “They don’t know what they don’t know syndrome” We actually wrote a blog post about this earlier.
Institutions seem to delay or say no to our programs (even if free) – because they have not yet found it important to prioritize the learning of correct literature searching skills.
We deliberated further. Why do brilliant people not understand this importance?
Is it because they have never been trained on how to use libraries right from school days? And also to give credits to the best resources when they write?
We are not sure, but believe that this may be the reason!
Practically every feedback video reveals that the person was never taught the basics of structured searching – starting from “understand the coverage of a resource”.
And so – our quest continues.
We just launched our latest ELearning course – “Reference Management with Zotero”
We are looking for more grants to cover more institutions.
But what we need even more is that institutions understand this need and subscribe to our courses – year after year – so that every student and professional gets a great learning experience.
We want all of them to save time, get a strong foundation in research skills, and produce good research, publications and the best evidence!
April 2, 2024: Stakeholder Story – Dr Jawahar Panjwani – help for a lecture he was deliveringApril 2, 2024:
At QMed we marvel at so many things that are unique about us. One aspect is that very often the people who experience the benefits of our work, give us a donation to support our work.
One such person is Dr Jawahar Panjwani – an Orthopedic Surgeon. Some years ago he had attended our workshop. But there is that much a practising surgeon can retain from a workshop and actually apply. The best learning they get is – they know what they can and cannot expect and they know how to communicate their needs, to information specialists like us.
Recently Dr Panjwani called and requested:
“I have to talk on diagnosing infections in hip Arthroplasty. The target audience is Maharashtra Orthopaedic Association surgeons. Do you think you could help me with some references specially targeting newer infection markers (blood) and protocols for diagnosis?”
If you read this carefully – he told us all that we needed. The topic. The purpose for his search. The target audience. The topic’s nuances. He further mentioned that there were others talking on other aspects, and he specifically needed only the above.
Very often people who have not gone through our programs, do not give us such specifics, let alone the reason for their wanting a search done. Every bit matters when one does a literature search. We can learn lots of techniques (QMed indeed teaches plenty of them) – but one needs to know how to apply them for different purposes and contexts.
It took me very little time to work on this and we sent him around 50 results. In two days he responded – “The references are great” and sent us a donation for the same!
We really appreciate Dr Panjwani – not just for his donation (though we are indeed grateful for it). We think it is great that that he made the effort to ask for professional help, and that he read up a number of very relevant articles in order to cover the best of the latest, in his talk. And of course – we are really happy to have contributed to this. Do listen to this short video clip by Dr. Panjwani
March 15, 2024: Founder Story – Spreading QMed’s Mission – Travel Challenges
Date: Friday March 15, 2024
Category: Founder Story
Keywords: Human Experience, QMedCourses, Train Travel
Sharing a story from our Founder – the human experiences of her train travels, as she spreads QMed’s mission
When I conduct workshops in cities, most often I fly. We read a lot about flying woes these days – delayed flights and more. With train journeys, for me they are a wee bit more challenging as I get on in years. But my love for delivering lectures and conducting workshops all over India, makes me decide to accept most of these challenges!
I am sharing the “good aspects” that I recently encountered, in the midst of challenges.
In 2023, I had done a workshop in Anand (Gujarat), and later a lecture in Dhule (Maharashtra). After the workshop at Anand, during my return journey, there was a confusion about where my train coach would appear. I kept getting different inputs from the railway website and from people on the platform.
Finally, I approached a room with policemen and asked them. One cop came out and said – “Please wait for a bit and I will revert”. In a short while he came out and escorted me to almost the other end of the platform. Not just that, he carried my laptop bag and my small suitcase, seeing that I had some difficulty in walking. He ensured that I had a comfortable seat on the platform and also told me where exactly my coach would come. He had to leave. He gave me his mobile number and said “If you have any problem, please call me”!
Most often we only read about complaints regarding officials and cops. This was a wonderful human story that I felt I must share.
Similarly, on my return trip from Dhule, my train was delayed by a full three hours. Which meant that instead of a (late enough) 10.30 PM, I had to wait till 1.30 AM to board the train – in a small town station. I reached the platform at 11.30 AM (knowing that the train would be late). The Professor who invited me, sent his driver to drop me at the station. This driver came with me to the platform, spoke with some railway personnel, found my coach position and settled me there. And the railway personnel also told me that he would be around (on night duty) and would assist me if I needed.
He kept his word and checked twice more with the control room and made sure that my coach would be at the point where I was waiting.
I’d like to stress that in these stations, the train stops for barely two minutes and for people like me it is important that I do not have to run a distance to reach my coach. Officials like these make it so good for senior citizens.
In addition – they help us carry out QMed’s mission. A silent thank you to them!
QMed has miles to go before our teaching reaches all health sciences institutions – by inclusion in the curriculum. All of us at QMed have pledged that we will not rest till we achieve this mission. All of us constantly move out of our comfort zones. I did my share recently by accepting the challenges of unearthly travel times and some unpredictable instances. I love what I do.
March 1, 2024: Program Update – Single Sign On for our ELearning site for InstitutionsMarch 1, 2024:
At QMed, we continuously explore how we can make things better with our ELearning courses – www.qmedcourses.in
One of the things we explored was the option of a Single Sign On, also known SSO. Several libraries have an SSO tool to allow their students and faculty to access various library resources they subscribe to. This helps in many ways
- Library users – do not need to remember several different user ids and passwords
- The resource providers – do not need to physically enroll each person. They also need not worry about ineligible users having access – when students or employees leave the organization
- The institution and the library feel good about making things easy for their users.
QMed first provided access using the SSO – to Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi. The librarian Ms Indira and the vendors of the SSO – (Knimbus) coordinated with us and helped us make this happen
The next two institutions were AIIMS Bhopal and AIIMS Bathinda – through their SSO – MyLoft. Again the vendors were very helpful.
We hope to do this in more institutions that have an SSO platform and we hope that those who do not have one, will get one soon!