Storytellers

  Dear Comrades, I hope this letter finds you well. I recently had the privilege of coming back to the Uyirmei Muthamizh Mandram and meeting friends who are currently studying UG. What started out as a sharing of my experience as an intern, turned out to be a fruitful discussion on the social responsibility of doctors, with an engagement beyond what I had imagined. My sincere thanks to Vijay Sir for inviting me and the members of the Mandram for showing up and holding a respectful and safe space for discussion. I write this letter in the hope of reaching people beyond the confines of the time and space of our meeting. The following is what I had prepared, processed and penned down as my contribution to the discussion. I want to share with you a story from my days as an intern in the Department of General Medicine at ESI Hospital, Chennai. On March 8, 2019, I was posted in the Female Out-Patient Department and I thought there couldn’t be a better way to celebrate the International W...

Eulogy to a safe space called intern’s review meeting Vijayaprasad Gopichandran In 2018, we had the first batch of interns in our department. While planning for the internship postings in our department for the first time, we were exploring various models including my own internship in community medicine at the Madras Medical College way back in 2001. Community Medicine internship was a roller coaster ride. It was filled with travel to exotic rural locations to serve in the primary health centers, work outside of the hospital in communities, attending camps and outreach activities, with a school health screening visit thrown in to enhance the fun and play experience. In all this, one thing that was missing was a mentorship to link the myriad activities to the goals and objectives of internship in community medicine. I remember being clueless at the end of the posting, sometimes not even realizing what all I had actually absorbed from the centers and the community where I was posted....

Vijayaprasad Gopichandran  “I don’t know if the class would work out well. I have planned to ask them to go and speak to caregivers of patients with chronic illnesses in the hospital and bring back stories. Not sure if it is too much to expect out of second year students”, I was speaking to my friend about the class that I had planned for this morning. I was uncertain about how it would go. The students of this batch of MBBS were very good. But were they patient and mature enough to have empathetic interviews with caregivers? Even if they did conduct these interviews were they capable of discerning the subtexts and inner meanings behind what is being said? There were numerous questions running in my mind. With a lot of self-doubt, I entered the classroom.     “Please divide yourself into 8 batches and go to the respective wards that I listed. I want each group to identify one patient who has a chronic condition, which means any illness that disables the patient for more t...

 Vijayaprasad Gopichandran, 18.06.2023 It was 12 noon, the clouds had closed on the sky, and it was dark, there was a gentle drizzle. The out-patient clinic was lean. The past few days had been oppressively hot and suddenly it was cloudy and pouring since morning. So, people had chosen to stay home. A man about 40 years of age, wet in the rain walked into our clinic. He was wearing a dark blue striped lungi, and a red shirt with the top 3 buttons open. His hair was unkempt and wet in the rain. There was a thick salt and pepper stubble. The look on his face was one mixed with anger, apathy, and irritation. Behind him stood a woman, much smaller than him in stature, with a grim look on her face and her eyes red, probably due to a lot of crying. His body language exuded reluctance as he walked slowly into the clinic and took the seat in front of me.    “Please tell me sir, what brings you to the clinic,” I said in my usual kind demeanour. He gave a shocked look filled with i...

Vijayaprasad Gopichandran, 15.06.2023   I am part of the scientific review committee of our institution and today we had a meeting to discuss research proposals and review them. The meeting ended on an academically surcharged note. I will present the research study which was the cause for this interesting debate and then lay out the premise of the debate.    One researcher from the department of gynecology proposed a study in which she wants to explore the association between obesity and puberal menorrhagia, excessive bleeding during menstruation in adolescent girls. She said that she would enroll adolescent girls who have pubertal menorrhagia in the study and assess whether they are obese or not. The hypothesis was that pubertal menorrhagia is more common among obese girls. In addition to this as a second part of this study, she said she would give these adolescent girls standard treatment for the excessive bleeding and then see whether the obesity influences response to...

  Vijayaprasad Gopichandran Assistant Professor, Community Medicine, ESIC Medical College and Hospital, KK Nagar, Chennai 600078 email:  vijay.gopichandran@gmail.com   Lecture prepared to be delivered on 31 May 2023 at the Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur, as part of the course on “Building collaborations across sectors” to students of MPH (Implementation Science)    I have been asked to speak to a group of professionals who are currently studying implementation research in public health on the theme of building multi sectoral collaborations in public health. I think the greatest form of collaboration in public health is collaboration with the community. Community is the most important stakeholder in the public health enterprise and therefore collaborating with the community is an essential component of successful delivery of public health services. What follows are my lecture notes. I intend to talk to these specialists on empowerment as a...