UDLCO : Indian medical Faculty and students disdain for research and addressing the issue

UDLCO : Indian medical Faculty and students disdain for research and addressing the issue 

Summary : There appearance to be an in general disdain for the word research among Indian medical faculty and post graduate students as evidenced in the conversational learning inputs below. First step to address this would be to provide them an understanding on how research and academics is nothing but a tool (not necessarily a quantitative black box tool alone) to solve real life problems. 

[2/23, 8:22 PM] vKsrtc : If your junior faculty and PG students are not trained in atleast BCBR, then it’s such a tough job for the IRB and IEC… cause each and every presentation is like the elephant and the 5 blind men…!! Phew… 😥

[2/23, 8:42 PM] Physiology Prof Meu: For that one needs to have trained professors and guides who are meant to train them with regular follow up activities, one time BCBR course is not the ultimate..

[2/23, 8:51 PM] PtSrtc : Forcing students least interested in research to engage in research. Forcing students who spend in excess of one crore to get MD degree to engage in research so later they can earn 40K as researchers

[2/23, 8:53 PM] Physiology Prof Meu:

Research culture has to be built in any organization, it can never be forced upon.

If it is forced and made mandatory, then it is compromised with quality.

[2/23, 8:56 PM] PtSrtc : Fully agree. But what is the ground reality?

[2/23, 8:57 PM] Physiology Prof Meu: Ground reality is created by us only, isn't that so?

[2/23, 9:05 PM] PtSrtc : Here I beg to differ. Ground reality is created by facilities available, inclination of students joining PG, inclination of people joining academics, research environment of the institute, availability or lack of funds etc etc.

[2/23, 9:09 PM] Prof Comm Med: Push (external) & pull (internal) factors will be there for both success/ failure.

[2/23, 9:18 PM] Physiology Prof Meu: Thats "we" only.

[2/23, 9:37 PM] BnySrtc : Instead of forced PG thesis, they should may be introduce grace marks or academic points ...which might build a better CV for those who want a academic & research career still being a clinician and the system   can free those PGs who have no plans in research or academics as a career or interest

[2/23, 9:44 PM] Prof Comm Med: If a doctor is unable to do PG dissertation in three years in an institution under faculty guidance, then he/ she is unlikely to do it alone later after passing MD/MS without faculty guidance/ insitutional set up. 🤐😷

[2/23, 9:45 PM] BnySrtc : Why do it, if they have no inclination towards it is the basic question here

[2/23, 9:47 PM] NdSrtc : MBBS degree was sufficient in old days

[2/23, 9:47 PM] Prof Comm Med: PGs who do not want to dissertation for three years can be given two years PG diploma without dissertation as earlier system under MCI.

[2/23, 9:49 PM] SrjSrtc : Let them not do.... Let them just practice as clinicians.... Ultimately they have to work as clinicians.... 99.99.will just be clinicians after completion of p. g.... Just they have to do dissertation only as a requirement in pg. course... If it is not made mandatory, very few will willingly opt for it... Any one willingly doing should get full training and support... My opinion...

[2/23, 9:52 PM] BnySrtc : By this a good clinician will be respected in his field of work and a good researcher will be taken seriously and given due respect and resources

[2/23, 9:54 PM] KySrtc : There are few clinicians who hardly know about Excel or word. Atleast through dissertation they will become familiar with few words like sample size, p value, chi square test etc. otherwise it vl be vry odd even ..when a common degree BSC, or bph patients come to know that their treating doctor not even know about basic terms.....

Wts loss in learning...if needed u can use in further articles or papers if not no problem

[2/23, 9:54 PM] NdSrtc : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2405452622000672

[2/23, 9:56 PM] KySrtc : Why only IT persons or MBA or CA should walk with laptops and not medicos.....or ask them for help in Microsoft/ data sorting etc .....when u hv read  15+ subject in ur career why not one more

[2/23, 9:57 PM] SrjSrtc : Treatment of any disease is not related to whether clinician knows excel or data or sample size.. Clinicians need to know how to diagnose and treat a condition.... Also how to prevent it...

[2/23, 9:58 PM] Prof Comm Med: Medical Representatives may teach all necessary knowledge in their clinics, if they don't learn research methodology, ethics, statistics, evidence based medicine during academic training in teaching hospitals.

[2/23, 10:01 PM] kysrtc : Once a clinician is always a clinician irrespective of number of patients treated. But why should such an educated, learned skilled person present himself dumb in such an easy subjects....leave other professionals....atleast in front of your non-medical spouse / friends/siblings/own children

[2/24, 4:31 AM] adSrtc : The art and science of trashing irrelevant research should be taught first

[2/24, 8:32 AM] Rakesh Biswas: Aka critical appraisal

[2/24, 8:42 AM] Rakesh Biswas: I feel most faculty have this disdain toward research because they have a wrong view of what research means and they may think it's all to do with mastering quantitative methodological terms etc that somehow generate results in a black box non meaningful manner and to be further provocative I will state that this is all the fault of our community medicine faculty who are largely population and public health experts and try to promote the above idea of research! 😅

On the other hand general medicine deals with individual patients (I guess this is what people here mean by clinical work and excellence) and is naturally qualitative having to deal with a lot of textual and common sense data generating meaning rather than numerical values that are hard to corroborate with reality! 

We need to urgently introduce more and more faculty to this form of qualitative research to understand it's ability to create an impact one patient at a time! Most clinicians are doing it anyway but it can be made better many times through documentation and communication toward collective meaningful impact

[2/24, 9:39 AM] Prof Comm Med: Why blame particular dept? If one is interested in research, he can do it in any field - hospital or community based, irrespective of clinical or non-clinical dept. Even some UGs come up with good ideas, proposals, conduct research & present in conferences & publish papers. Its all about internal motivation & external enabling factors.

[2/24, 9:44 AM] Rakesh Biswas: 

Meant to be provocative! 

Next provocation :

There's nothing non clinical in medicine. 

Again the community Medicine department is to blame for differentiating healthcare into these silos and making everyone lose sight of the whole patient! 😅

[2/24, 9:54 AM] RRSrtc  : Some faculty in the dept maybe. Don’t blame particular specialty with shallow understanding about it.

[2/24, 9:56 AM] Rakesh Biswas: I'm provoking those department faculty specifically because they have the deepest understanding of research (as per my shallow understanding)! 😅

/24, 9:41 AM] NSrtc : 

If I'm wrong please say so,

Majority of faculties are commoners. Those were mostly seduced at an impressionable age to join a stream in the presumptive benefit of the family / clan. Nobody discussed the horror of 'grave hour' duty schedule. None of the so called well wishers had ever bothered to elaborate meaning of ' Indentured servitude'. 

May be our guardians were so accustomed to this kind of invisible services, they took it as an integral part of mundane existence and the sole purpose of living and to be recognised in a very predictable way.  A technical brain wash is done and an adolescent is committed to a noble cause ( do not read hara-kiri). Specially when parents and or benevolents are readily paying for tution and boarding (a la on human bondage).

Unless there is direct incentive ( whatever it may be) there will be hardly any spontaneous 'research long march'. 

Only administrative threat of injunction towards carrier advancement will yield mandatory average quality research products in obscure, average and lost in the crowd magazines (journals). 

To me it is a kind of 'two child' family mandate recently introduced in China. We are hopelessly trapped in an academic war zone and anxiously waiting for further order from upper echelon and digging around and sniffing to retrieve new academic material to publish.

Faculties have other headaches (read burden, commitments, responsibility and priorities) where research comes as a largesse for a few, not for the mass.

To be honest, only single minded and workaholic individuals can churn out good research material consistently in the professional career. But for a majority it is a last resort of appeasement with the authority. 

Medical professionals are not special or unique because of their 4&1/2 years of regimental training. They belong to middle class average working population bogged in various emotional, social and financial mortgages.

[2/24, 9:49 AM] Rakesh Biswas: 

Agree with these views. 

Only it may be a lack of proper management of time and resources, essentially a systems management issue that we could be lamenting here? 

Also can empathize and totally agree with the levels of complexity and humongous amount of data points a practising doctor has to deal with because of the current faulty systems design. 

Again provoking as a devil's advocate:

Isn't it all our fault as medical faculty that we couldn't properly research and design our own workflows because we are allergic to complexity and uncertainty? 😅