Experiences on Medical Education networking

To share experiences on medical education networking I guess I won't have to go back further than when I was an undergrad medical student.

I always thought the best way to crack the assessments would be to know what our examiners knew. A bit of networking with them would have allowed me to know what was on their minds but then getting to get to know them was a major challenge in our college where even the internal examiners were actually from a different college (although from the same university).

So we had to restrict ourselves to knowing what was general knowledge ( I believe the MCI calls them "must know").

However a bit of networking with our hostel seniors did allow us a sneak peak into the previous assessment scenarios with interesting tit bits on the examiners as well.

Hostel life that way was a great place for networking.

I soon grew out of the assessment networking fever after having completed UG although I could never grow up from being a medical student: http://student.bmj.com/issues/03/02/reviews/41.php

In my clinical practice I realize that networking is essential to success and each and every new workplace offers its own challenges in setting up networks from scratch ( I have changed a good many places from Kolkata, Chandigarh, Nepal, Bangalore, Malaysia and finally Bhopal).

However online networking gives me an opportunity to maintain older networks with ease. My facebook contacts ( 250 and growing) are mostly people who I met on my previous institutions, many of them students sharing their life pictures ranging from holidaying in US or Borneo to getting married or having children etc etc.

Wish I could have kept in touch with my patients in the same manner.

Facebook gives me a hope that some day in the distant/near future we shall be able to network more meaningfully with our students and patients.