Storytellers

  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 an important social const

I recently taught a class on difficult doctor-patient communication to first year students. It was originally planned as an interactive playful activity but turned out to be a very serious and engaging discussion on doctor-patient communication. The young first year students never cease to surprise me with their acute awareness and sensitivity to the world around them. I gave the group two scenarios, the first one was a patient who told lies to the doctor and the second one was an elderly father grieving his son’s death because of which his blood pressure was poorly controlled. The students planned a role play of these scenes and did a fantastic job. The class went on well and we ended up discussing various nuances on how to handle a patient who is lying. We discussed why people lie, how to communicate without embarrassing the patient who is lying, how to disentangle the lie from the truth and help the patient adopt the correct treatment behaviour. In the second scenario we discussed t

  It is the time of the year when a new bunch of medical students graduate into internship. I was given the task of talking to this group about ethics and professionalism. It was a post lunch session and my session followed a very important and serious session by a senior faculty on medical documentation, writing case sheets, lab requests etc. I started my session with a 10 min break, as the previous session had spilled over into mine and the ending note of the previous session was rather grim. I prepared lecture notes that I wanted to cover. But the session was grossly compromised in time and so I could not cover much of what I wanted to say. Therefore, I am writing what I originally intended to tell the students.     Ethics and professionalism have become part of the routine medical curriculum now as part of AETCOM module. One fundamental question that can arise in the mind of a young intern entering the medical profession is “why should I be ethical?” It is an important question. Wh

  “ Sir, I want to participate in a case presentation competition in that prestigious medical college” – this was a first year medical student who approached me a week ago. “Sir, I am planning to write my USMLE, I need to strengthen my CV, can I start coming to your rural clinic with you?” – this was a young second year student. “Sir, I want to go there and train the rural surgeons how to do certain surgeries. I feel like I have so much to offer them” – this is an intern who has just finished her surgical internship postings.  The days of self-doubt and uncertainty of medical students and freshly minted doctors is slowly phasing out. Many medical students with whom I work today have unbelievable clarity about where they are headed and what they need to do to get there. I remember a very interesting conversation that I had with a young third year medical student. We were talking about behavior change and life-style modification for patients with diabetes. This student had read somewhere