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....