A class of a different kind
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 than a month. I