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Posts Tagged ‘future of medicine’

Welcome to the exciting new era in scientific  Medicine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 11, 2025|

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Be happy with the “H” Index of Hippocrates

Posted in Cardiology quotes, cardiology-ethics, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2022|

“Publish or perish “

This sound bite is regularly uttered by all academic leads in any university or medical school. I don’t know, why this bothers me. Looking back, many of our mentors & professors never had any great publications. Still, they were extraordinary teachers and wonderful clinicians with great wisdom. They created generations of high-quality doctors who are present all over the globe now. Is scientific publication that important in a doctor’s life? After pondering for quite some time, got a hazy answer to that query in one of my sleepless early morning academic dreams.

Hippocrates was one of the applicants for the post of professor of medicine at Harvard medical school.His application was rejected for a dismally low H index. The reluctant father of medicine tried to impress the authorities, by telling them that his experience was vast and used to teach medicine 2000 years ago, well before their country USA was discovered. The father of medicine almost begged to reconsider their decision.The miffed Harvard academic office ridiculed the old man and insisted nothing will work, except a minimum H index of  50 or atleast 10 papers as first author in a peer reviewed high Impact  factor journal. A dejected Hippocrates returned to Kos islands and asked his new generation fellows, what is this H index and Impact  factor stuff ? His students were worried about their guru’s ignorance. They some how convinced the greatest ever medical teacher to urgently subscribe for a platinum membership of a premium medical authourship services located in the Boston suburb and fixed a 30 day deadline for his first manuscript.

(What is this H index ?)  Why is it so popular?)    Ref : J. E. Hirsch  An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nov 2005, 102 (46) 16569-16572; 

Off to Kos Islands 

Now, let us travel back in time,2000 years ago to this picturesque nation, Kos islands in the Aegean sea,. This is where Hippocrates taught lessons under his favorite tree. No teaching apps, No 4k audiovisuals, The humble noise from within his lips became great wisdom thoughts. All that students had were set of ears to hear him. Hippocrates became the celebrated father of medicine for two reasons. He was the first to dispute the then-prevailing thoughts about human health and disease. He first proposed for every illness there is a hidden reason ie the beginning scientific basis. He insisted and negated the idea that diseases are bestowed upon by evil forces and spirits. The second one is more important. He realized knowledge, skill, and power are a deadly mix for the healing industry if they lack responsibility. He foresaw non-academic factors that will try to challenge the integrity of medical professionals and the health care delivery systems. It is astonishing to note how he could predict this 2000 years ago and wrote the behavior code for medical professionals which has become immortal.

How to grade the quality of medical professionals?

Scientific publication is just one of the indices of quality assessment for medical professionals. Grading them based on a few manufactured rating systems is beginning to look like an academic comical. There are many more visible and invisible, quantifiable and non-quantifiable quality assessment parameters that deserve attention.

Research  & Innovations are indeed the pivotal pillars that take us to newer frontiers of medicine. But, It is explicitly clear now, the prime purpose of research is definitely not aimed at the growth of science. It is more of a survival tool, intertwined with commerce, status symbol, pride, peer pressure, self-esteem, rivalry, or just a filler for CV. 

Final message 

Blanket statements like Publish or perish at any cost could be a dangerous doctrine to adopt in medical education which is essentially about healing and caring (& whenever possible, curing). In one sense, medical teaching is little to do with research. Many of the great professors in our country never published a single paper. Unfortunately, research and teaching have been made to look inseparable. Beware, history has repeatedly taught us medical professionals need not be hyper-intelligent. They need to be just wise, men /women of integrity, enriched with sincerity, righteousness. Proper consumption of knowledge is much more important than the creation of it. Let us hope the future will be at least as perfect as the past. 

Postamble

My  H index stands at 15, I must confess I am confused a lot. Should I bother for more, or be just be happy to reach the H index of our mentor and father of medicine, which is numero Zero, and propagate his work. 

Reference 

1  Grzegorz Kreiner The Slavery of the h-index—Measuring the Unmeasurable..Front. Hum. Neurosci., 02 November 2016

2.Academic excellence does not always require publication  Ernest L Boyer argued in his 1990 book, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities for the professoriate,(BoyerScholarshipReconsidered)

3.Too much academic research is being published https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20180905095203579 

 

 

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Five cardinal principles of practicing “Modern Medicine” (un)successfully

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 19, 2019|

Somehow the concept of  Evidence based medicine (EBM )never excited me in spite of great strides it has made. Probably the main reason for this is, EBMs origin, quality, and credibility is currently severely compromised. (Though It appears to ooze science 24/7 and make us believe in it too !) Herewith, sharing some of the forbidden thoughts(with lots of pun)  for a (un)successful practice of EBM. This is definitely not meant for young and novice medical professionals. Strictly for the ones who can segregate sense from non (S)

Evidence-based Doubting 

 

Reference

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What ails the “Noble” profession ?… Is it the “erring” medical Intellect !

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 31, 2016| 2 Comments »

medical education critics cardiology evdnce based medicine growth ethics

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When medical morality . . . becomes a casuality !

Posted in bio ethics, cardiology -Preventive, medical quotes, Two line sermons in cardiology, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »

medical morality

Tree of life : When professional morality suffers a mortality . . . human health becomes a causality !

Greatest threat to the future of  human health is  . . .

  • Not from  exotic  infectious agents , bird flu  or  mosquito  fevers
  • Not from  epidemic of cardio vascular disease
  • Not from  thousands of  published  diseases in ICD code
  • Not from  aging population and failing  vital  organs
  • Not from  lack of availability of life saving  drugs and devices
  • Not from  lack of  hospital beds.
  • Not from  good sanitation
  • Not from  hunger and poverty
  • Not from  lack of para medical workers
  • Not from  lack of health awareness and education

But from  . . .

  • The way  health care is administered in this planet .
  • The way  noble professionals are created .
  • The way  trivial health  issues prevail over  major  health crises  that  wallop the health budgets.
  • The way by which  medical morality is systematically destroyed
  • The way   “concept of  health” is  sold  as a  buyable  commodity by insurance companies.
  • The way  medical journals churns out  junk articles in the name of research.
  • The way corporates indulge in  delirious pursuit  to  increase  bed occupancy rate of their  patient  ware houses (Also called Hospitals)
  • The  way greedy drug companies aim to increase the per capita drug consumption of  ill informed  homo-sapiens  by discovering  pseudo  drugs for pseudo  illness
  • The way   health insurance policies are misused
  • The way  rich spend billions for reconstructive  cosmetic  surgery while the poor die for want of basic medicines !

 

Link to a wonderful  article  on moral education for our kids in medical school !

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