Report of National Conference on Health Professionals’ Education 2009, Pune

Report of National Conference on Health Professionals’ Education 2009, Pune

The National conference on Health Professionals’ Education 2009 was organised by department of medical education and technology, Maharashtra University of Health Sciences’, regional centre, Pune 10th to 13th Dec 2009 in collaborations with Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER), USA and Department of Health and Human Services, USA. The theme of conference was “Good Teaching Practices – Sharing best practices in teaching – learning and assessment”. There were two pre-conference CME for 10th and 11th Dec 2009.

The first CME was on ‘Students assessment – New trends and tools’. The faculties of CME have tired to show the new evaluation tools for students’ assessment. The areas of students’ evaluation are like knowledge, procedural skills, professionalism, interest in learning and system based practice. In first part of CME, they discussed on communication skill assessment with some role-play situation. In the session, we learnt how to convey the message to students as teacher. There are various positive and negative ways to communicate the message. The negative way of communication like scolding leads to loss of interest in subject and poor learning. But positive way of communication leads to improve in interest in subject.
In afternoon session, we learnt about the simulation case studies. The facilitator Dr. John Norcini has given detail about simulation based evaluation of students. It was great learning exercise. He demonstrated various video clippings for communication and asked us to rate. After the rating, he has given score obtained by that candidate in real time and compare. It was found the relation was linear. The score of ours was matching with score, which obtained by student. Thus he told that the objective evaluation has consistency and it has added advantages on subjective evaluation.

The second day CME was on ‘Biomedical communication and medical ethics’. It was also good learning from various faculties from ICMR, industry research fellow and other. In morning session, first session from Dr. K. Satyanarayn, ICMR, (editor of IJMR) elaborated on topic ‘how to write scientific paper and publish in medical journal’. He told about role of ICMR in Indian Research scenario. The Government of India has established department of health research (DHR) and ICMR is the part of DHR. Second session was from Dr. V. S. Padbidri, KEM hospital and research center, Pune, he has given inputs on various aspect of process of writing paper. He has focused on title, abstract, key words and references writing. Dr. Dinesh Badyal has spoke on method of IMRAD method of paper writing. IMRAD means introduction, method, result and discussion. It is the international accepted method of paper writing method. He spoke on introduction and method writing pattern. Dr. Viraj Rajadhyaksha has elaborated on result and discussion writing pattern. He has also shown various ways of presentation of data, pictorial or in word.
In afternoon session, above all speakers have elaborated on ethical aspect of research, oral and poster presentation guideline.

The actual conference days were 12 and 13th of Dec 09. In morning conference was inaugurated by Dr. Snehlatha Deshmukh, Ex VC of Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) and Dr. Mrudula Phadke VC of MUHS. The Ex VC madam has emphasis on maximum incorporation of preventive medicine in curricula. She also told that there should be quality control group in college to monitor the quality of medical education and students should be part of the quality control group. During inauguration, they facilitated their senior teacher from MUHS.
The keynote address was given by Dr. Ved Prakash Mishra, member of MCI. He told that 13.5% of world’s medical school are in India. 16.5% of post graduate admission are in India. He also told that WHO has reported by 2015, 36% of medical manpower are to be produced by India and India is the biggest medical manpower supplier in world. He also reported that out of 300 medical school in India, 217 have active medical education unit as per last report of Dec 2009. He also told to teachers that the medical teachers should develop medical education model, which should student centred and student friendly. He also clarified the role of medical education unit in the development of students and faculties.
Dr. Rita Sood, organizing secretary of National conference on Medical Education 2007, has shared her experiences of 2007 and followed up of that conference. She told the recent MCI regulation regarding medical education unit was the outcome of last conference. There are three FAIMER regional institutions are stared and many FAIMER fellows are working in various medical colleges. Dr. Payal Bansal, organising secretary of present conference told about the continuing journey of medical education and the product of the journey is the NCHPE 2009. There is lot of support from FAIMER, USA and Department of Health and Human services, USA for organizing conference.


Then there was a session on ‘capacity building in health profession education’ by Dr. W. Burdic, FAIMER. He told the process of capacity building which include identify individual, effective learning, facilitate real life application for knowledge and skill and create career path with opportunity to grow. It was great session.
The afternoon session was on poster presentation. They have different style of poster presentation. They divided six group for poster ppt. Each group consist of poster participants, faculties from FAIMER and observer. Those who were not presenting poster were asked to opt one group. They signed one group. The group had poster presentation. The group has selected one person as chairperson and one reporter. Each poster presenter has given five minutes to present and five to ten minutes for discussion. The discussion was based on their guideline. Group has to elicit the information from poster like message, enabling factors, challenges/obstacles: problems, impact and future. The reporter wrote all the information as per guideline from each group. This was the great and different experience. They thought the new way of oral presentation. This is the FAIMER style of poster presentation.


The next day morning there was a presentation from all groups. Each group had presented the salient points from their group. It was really exciting experience. There were total seven group and each group had some 9-10 poster about 65 posters, From various medical colleges and on various topics like observational studies to intervention studies. It was great to see three medical colleges are from Gujarat, they are P S Medical college, Karamsad; B J Medical college, Ahmedabad and Government Medical College Bhavnagar. The abstract book is with me and anyone want to study various project please contact me. Also one can visit web page www.nchpe.in for more details.


On second day, after report form various groups; Dr. Anand from CMC Vellor has presented their experiences on community based teaching and family physician teaching. Dr. Krishna from Ramachandra Medical college, Kurlu has tried to explain the integration of medical curriculum in each year. In first year they had tried organ block based system mean that the both department teach same system simultaneously, like if anatomy start abdomen the physiology also start GI in their lecture and he said it works well. He also told that they tried to incorporate generic posting in second year. First few weeks they had given common posting to students like for communication skill and other generic skill and they found it was welcome by students.
Dr. N G Patil from Uniersity of Hong Kong has shared his experiences from HongKong University. They have implemented case base study in each department. He also added that if you want to start such case base study in medical education, one need more junior staff like tutors and ration should 1 tutor per 10 students. He also said something about four ‘P’ that mean punctuality, preparation, participation and presentation in small group discussion, which is necessary for case base study. He shared experience from China medical school where 400 to 500 students input in one medical school. In such large gathering also they are doing case base study and that is known as ‘Restaurant approach’. He also show the library and other facilities in their university and it really great.
In next session, Dr. John Norcini has covered the topic ‘the future assessment in medical education’. He talked more on simulation based exercises and it evaluation. He said Indian medical school should also start on such simulation indirectly. But challenges in simulation are difficult to make cases and score need to make reliable. There are lots of experiments required for simulation.
Next session Dr. Larry Gurrupan from University of Michigan said on programme evaluation and education research. He stressed upon that there is need to evaluate each teaching programme in context to objectives learnt. This is the check for the improvement in programme. He show the steps in programme evaluation.
Post lunch there was a penal discussion on Role of education units in Advancing health professions, where five expert from premier institute of India like AIIMS, JIPMER, CMC, Mumbai and Combater have discussed various aspect of medical education unit and role in medical education. They agreed on each medical college should have active medical education unit and regular training should be conducted for faculties. The unit has important role in faculties development. The unit should also focus on medical education research. Such small research will be the guiding path for future medical education.

Thus all the sessions of workshop and conference were really exiting and bridging the gap in knowledge.
Dr. Niraj Pandit
Department of Community Meidicine
SBKS Medical Institution and Research Centre
Piparia Dist Vadodara
Gujarat