Tag Archive | MedBlogging
Literature Search Workshop at UCMS: Extra-Curricular Academics at the MEU
The Medical Education Unit at the University College of Medical Sciences, where I am now doing my residency, is a small, but super-active group of people, and they presented today a workshop on Literature Searching and Reference Management. Although the target audience was mainly the Residents, there was some spill-over as well. There were students […]
eThesis: A Continuous Narrative Experience
Our thesis protocols were submitted today and most of us had a bit of running around in circles to do before the closing bells chimed at 1 PM. I was especially peeved at the amount of paper that goes into the making of such a protocol. And given the fact that we had to submit […]
Despatch from Narela: Another Rural Posting Experience
It has been quite a long hiatus since I last wrote here, and a plethora of changes have affected my life since then. I hope to write about them sometime, and start writing here on a more regular basis, as before. Tonight’s post comes from a sleepy place called Narela, situated at the Delhi-Haryana border, […]
MAHE: A Fantastic Test Experience of an Unfair Evaluation System
I took the Manipal MD/MS PG Entrance examination today (aka MAHE) and as it was the first ever online test I was going to sit for, I was naturally a little excited and tensed about it. I managed to work it up to a bit of a useless frenzy last night. But I must say […]
Remembering Tinsley Harrison, the Oslerphile Physician
The past few weeks have been very demanding on me and I have not had the best of times, either on the personal or on the professional front. So, today, I took a break from the usual drudgery of life and decided to take a step back and remind myself of the bigger picture of […]
The (Alleged) Rajasthan PG Entrance Fiasco
I was thinking of writing about the postponement of the All India Post Graduate Entrance Exam in order to make time for an online counseling system to be put in place, but I just came across another bit of news that has left me wondering what the heck is wrong with the system. Now obviously, […]
Comic Book Meets Medicine: Little Orphan Annie
One of the classic histopathological signs that we read of in Pathology quite often is the Orphan Annie Eye nucleus seen in Papillary carcinoma of the thyroid. This odd name has an interesting history behind it. One that dates back to two popcult references – one at the fag end of the 1800s and one […]
Tech Care of Your Health
Well, it took a massively thought provoking article by Vinod Khosla on TechCrunch to jerk me out of my inertia of lethargy with blogging. In his post “Do we need Doctors or Algorithms” VK embarks on a sci-fiesque prediction of a day when doctors will be replaced by automatons delivering care on the basis of […]
Rapid Revision: Serum Sickness Like Reactions
Background: Serum sickness like reaction is a rare but well-recognized adverse effect with certain drugs, especially antibiotics, amongst which Cefaclor is particularly famous for this. The condition mimics typical serum sickness, which is a type III Hypersensitivity reaction but has not been associated with a similar pathophysiology. In fact the pathogenesis of serum sickness like […]
Rapid Revision: Chromoblastomycosis
This is the segment where I jot down high yield notes for rapid revision of some key features of a focused topic. I know I have not done these for a while now, but well, with the exams right around the corner, and blogging on the backburner, I decided this might be the format to […]
Is MBBS Becoming a Vestigial Degree?
“There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.” —William Osler, The Army Surgeon, Medical News, Philadelphia, 64:318, 1894. The focus of the modern day medical student has shifted from the broad to the specific. […]
Why the Future of Medicine Should Not be Predicted Based on Recruiting Company Surveys
KevinMD has been the blogging guru of almost all the young medical bloggers out there. I am no exception. I have been reading Kevin Pho’s blog ever since he wrote it on blogspot with a grid-focus theme. Of late, his blog has become a mishmash of ideas, with a cornucopia of bloggers writing on his […]
Earworms: Kolaveri Di and the Pathogenesis of a Musical Malaise
Like the rest of the nation (and some would say, the world), I have been asking myself over and over again why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di. And in addition to that I have been asking myself why the heck does this happen to us in the first place. Now if you are not aware […]
The Map of the Cat Conundrum: Richard Feynman and AIIMS November 2011
Well, that sounds like an odd assortment of topics to group under the same heading, does it not? Well, today I had the misfortune of experiencing first hand what Feynman had described ages ago in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman? As my blog readers might know, I had an examination today, and before you ask […]
Menage-a-Trois
Ah! Got you there, didn’t I? They say when trouble comes, it comes in threes. For example, this month, I have three soul crushing, morale destroying, confidence pulverizing examinations lined up one after the other. (That might explain this post!) Anyways, so I was reading a lot of clinical buzzwords and stuff and I realized […]
Trendelenberg vs Trendelenburg: What’s in a name?
I have a slew of exams lined up and am recovering from a (suspected) repetitive stress injury of the right wrist. Combined, they have managed to keep me offline long enough to stay off the blog. But since yesterday my wrist has been feeling a little more supple and hence, this post. Not much of […]
Negative Marking: Proposing An Alternative System
I had written this quite some time ago and I decided to publish this now for obvious reasons. I have an exam this Sunday! The AIPGMEE is a very dicey exam. My personal brush with it has not been very pleasant, so I have obvious conflicts of interest in proposing changes in it and hoping […]
Trick or Treatment: Do Doctors Encourage Poor Patient Behaviors?
Happy Pumpkin Day folks, and to celebrate this day of weird encounters, I am going to reel off a list of the commonest peeves I have experienced in the past couple of years I have been doing Medicine. There are obvious gaps in the stories, and many are not even unique to me, but I […]
Charles Beevor: The Sign of a “Bloody” Jerk
Forgive the hyperbolic title. Do not take offense and read on before hating on me. Please note the post script for added justification for this inflammatory title, if you so feel. Thanks. Now on with the main show! Not the best known of neurologists, history has not been very kind to this amicable gentleman, who […]
Google+ for Google Apps, Open Lab and Exam Musings
So this is a bit of a mishmash of a post. Google Plus is finally being opened up to the Google Apps users! Phew. That settles the hash of using my old Gmail address solely for the purpose of sticking stuff in the Google Plus panel! Anyways. With over 40 million users in a few […]
What Flies in KVPY: A Sample Project
I have been getting a deluge of requests to post some examples of the type of projects that have been selected. While it is a bit of a chore to track down the folks who got through and ask them for their project abstracts (most people are not so open minded about handing out unpublished […]
Gender Bias + Ignorance = DANGEROUS Patients?
Oh well, just read this post, and had to come write about it before sitting down to study for the night. The issue the author raises on the blog is a VERY important one, but dilutes it with her abject ignorance. The basic premise of the post is the right to choose physicians of a […]
Mediquiz: Rhapsody–Preliminary Round
This was the FIRST ever Mediquiz I conducted and fittingly, it was conducted with none other than Parijat Sen, the master quizzer himself. Along with Parijat (who will soon be leaving for an Internal Medicine residency in the US of A) and Shibojit Talukdar (who is doing his Surgery residency at the prestigious Post Graduate […]
MediQuiz: Inquizzitive–Mixed Bag
This is the last and final round from the MediQuiz that me and Tamoghna hosted at KPC Medical College on the occasion of Researching – The Foundation Workshop. This was meant to be like a closing round for the quiz, and most of the questions were culled from an earlier quiz conducted at Medical College […]
Grand Rounds Comes to INDIA!
Guess what, grand rounds is in India, hosted over at Radiologist Dr. Sumer Sethi’s blog. He has several great posts in it. Check out the whole deal here. One of my posts has also got in. I mailed it in to him today, and he was kind enough to put it up! I have been […]
House MD 8×02: Transplant
As big a fan of the House MD show I am, let me start off with the disclaimer that I consider this to be one of the worst ever episodes of House MD to come on air. EVER! And that is not just because of the sucky medical mystery, but also because of the very […]
MediQuiz: Inquizzitive–Occam’s Razor
Occam’s Razor is the law of parsimony or, in Latin, Lex Parsimoniae, which dictates that when faced with competing hypotheses, that are equal in all other respects, the better bet is to go with the one that makes the fewest new assumptions. In simple words, the simple hypothesis is the one to go with. In […]
Medical Student Research: The First Year Quandary
The problem with the Indian Medical Curriculum is that it is too intense, as it should be, no complaints there, but it offers no leeway to people who want to test out the waters in the fields like medical student research or public health or other associated streams not directly fed by the MBBS course […]
Embryology Mnemonic #Fail
Anatomy and Embryology have remained some of the most volatile subjects that I learnt in my medical course. Little has remained in my memory thanks to the attrition over the years, except for the clinical bits that were needed in the day to day life of a medical intern, which was not much, to say […]
