Over the years QMed has observed how undergraduate UG) students of health sciences have been showing keen interest in research. The percentage may be small, but the numbers are significant. And have been growing by the year. As early as in 2008 we were closely involved with Informer – a body of UG students who launched a first UG conference – Medicon in 2009 and then had it as an annual event for a number of years. The credit for this goes to Padmashri awardee, Dr MG Deo – who held such a conference for two years and then told students that they should continue to run this event.

Several other student events have happened over the years. Some of the colleges that have worked towards encouraging UG research events and invited us too to conduct our workshops are AFMC Pune, Sri Manakula Vinayagar Medical College, Puducherry, KMC Manipal and more. We also learnt that St John’s Medical College Bengaluru encourages UG research. There would be more that we do not know about. But, we know that teaching basics of research to the UG community is vital now!

Coming to QMed’s teaching, we have always observed that UG students learn the skills we teach, like sponges – soaking in all that we impart. And we also believe that because they are in the “learning phase” this is the best time to teach literature searching and referencing.

We have thought a lot in the last few years about how to encourage them.

Things are unfolding now

First – we offered access to QMedCourses for a token donation and also the opportunity to win prizes for good scores. More details about QMedCourses for students 

Next – We started a pilot program to mentor them to write publications. This initiative began with Dr Vinayak Mishra – a young medical graduate who offered to volunteer for QMed and make this a success. Students who enrolled for this were asked to do our courses to learn literature searching and referencing. And Dr Vinayak handled guiding them for authoring a couple of systematic reviews. Learn more about this (QMed disassociated with this project since May 2022))

In the pipeline – We are working at creating a “learning cum volunteering” opportunity for UG students. It is in the planning stage. If you are a UG student and interested in this opportunity, please write to info [at] qmed [dot] ngo – In the subject line please mention – “UG Student – wish to volunteer”.

And finally – we want them to work with us and see how we can make both the above programs successful. We need this to be a collaborative effort with others who are working on similar lines – just to name a few – ASPIRE GSMC, Jignyasa BJGMC , Global Consortium of Medical Education and Research (GCMER), and many more. The country needs a lot of effort to encourage UG students to learn research methodology well enough to at least handle their postgraduate thesis with much better preparedness than there is now. And if encouraged we may actually witness a major change in the country’s research outputs in the coming years!

Page checked / updated on 17-Aug-2023