Infiniteq Consultancy Services

26/09/2015

Doctor Patient Communication workshop for house surgeons in Madras Medical College, Chennai on 26.09.2015 between 9 am to 4 pm.

23/07/2015

Conceptual model of trust in physicians using SEM techniques published in the current issue of Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. http://ijme.in/index.php/ijme/article/view/2256/4812

Trust in the physician–patient relationship in developing healthcare settings: a quantitative exploration

26/06/2015

Facilitated Doctor Patient Communication Workshop for interns at PES Medical College, Kuppam

04/06/2015

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2015/06/04/vijayaprasad-gopichandran-how-can-we-measure-patientss-trust-in-doctors/

Jum Nunnally, the much acclaimed author of “Psychometric Theory” the standard textbook of psychometrics, which has run into several volumes, says “an accurate method was available for measuring the circumference of the earth 2000 years before the first systematic measur...

26/05/2015

Being addicted to the internet is an emerging issue in India among youngsters. Sharmitha Krishnamurthy has done a systematic study to evaluate the prevalence of this malady among college goers in Bengaluru.

http://www.ijph.in/article.asp?issn=0019-557X;year=2015;volume=59;issue=2;spage=115;epage=121;aulast=Krishnamurthy

Indian J Public Health, Official publication of Indian Public Health Association,India

14/05/2015

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2015/05/14/vijayaprasad-gopichandran-peer-review-from-an-author-reviewer-and-editors-perspective/

I write this as someone who just recovered from a battle that lasted 2 years in an attempt to publish the findings of one of my research papers. Four journals and 10 sets of peer reviews later, a paper which was initially deemed unfit to publish has been accepted by a reputed, indexed, high impact..…

06/05/2015

Facilitated a doctor-patient communication workshop at the Madras Medical College, Chennai. Small group, rich interactions. One of the participants commented "Most of what we did today is common sense matters, but we discovered that there is scope for thinking, discussing and consciously practicing them".

04/05/2015

The experience of developing a psychometric scale.

The journey started about 2 years ago. When I first started reading about psychometrics - the art of measuring the abstract psychological constructs, I was telling myself that this is hokum. Somebody claims to measure an abstract feeling like "stigma" and others believe that it actually measures that abstract feeling and it then becomes a "scale" and big research gets done based on this. I was a skeptic. Then I started reading and immersed myself into the concepts and the mathematics behind it. Several days of struggle, sleepless nights passed and I did not find clarity about the concepts. I sought out several teachers of psychometrics, but for somebody mathematically uninitiated like me, there was nobody who could simplify it in a language that I can understand. Facebook came to my rescue. Joined a Facebook group on psychometrics and slowly started understanding the details. The strength I had was a big data set with items which could potentially be converted to a scale. I learnt to play around with the data and slowly learnt Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory. Learnt the respective software for analyzing the data. When I thought I had gained some level of understanding of these psychometric methods, I realized that I had lost the connect with the construct of "trust" which I was studying. I realized that knowing psychometric methods without being in touch with the underlying construct is not productive. I had to struggle to keep in tune with both the realities - qualitative concept of trust and the highly quantitative paradigm of psychometrics. Today I see the paper on scale development published (link attached). I am questioning - is this scale really measuring trust? The skeptic who converted to a believer over the past 2 years, is now a skeptic again. I have come a full circle. Next time, maybe I will learn to make more sense with the qualitative research method.

http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e007305.full

Trust in physicians is the unwritten covenant between the patient and the physician that the physician will do what is in the best interest of the patient. This forms the undercurrent of all healthcare relationships. Several scales exist for assessment of trust in physicians in developed healthcare…

04/05/2015

45 year old Parvathy (name changed) suffers from severe pain over her right elbow. She has a tendinitis of the elbow - a golfer's elbow as it is called, though Parvathy has never seen a golf course in her life! I put her on an elbow sling, advised rest, gave pain medicines and sent her home.

Parvathy has 3 cows in her house. Lakshmi, one of the cows went into labor the next day. The bond between Lakshmi and Parvathy was so strong that Lakshmi refused to cooperate with the domestic hand for her delivery. Parvathy had to remove her sling on the elbow and get into action to help Lakshmi. She saved two lives!

The next day Parvathy walks to my clinic asking me to save her elbow...and relieve her pain. I reapplied the sling and started her on pain medicines, strictly asking her to give rest to the elbow.

The next day Parvathy came back. Lakshmi had kicked the domestic help and refused to be milked by her. This had led to milk logging in Lakshmi's udders and she was in pain. To help Lakshmi, Parvathy had to again undo her sling and get into action. Parvathy looked at me with apologetic eyes and with a distinct helplessness.

In all my ego as a physician, I was unable to help this nice woman, who despite her modest background was helping others around her. Medicine has such limitations. Each day is a lesson on humility.

17/04/2015

At last, are we bidding adieu to the "p value"?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-perturbed-by-loss-of-stat-tool-to-sift-research-fudge-from-fact/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

The journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology recently banned the use of p-values and other statistical methods to quantify uncertainty from significance in research results

26/03/2015

The Doctor-Patient Communication workshop for medical students was launched at the Government Villupuram Medical College, Villupuram for 3rd year MBBS students entering clinical rotations. Used simulations, videos, case studies, role play, games and patient narratives to orient students to patient centered thinking and effective doctor-patient communication. In the narrative feedback about the workshop one student wrote, "After attending this workshop i went to the wards in the evening. It changed my entire perspective towards the patients. This is a life-changing workshop". Thanks to Sudharshini Subramaniam for inviting ICS to facilitate the workshop and making this possible.

22/03/2015

ICS spread out its wings and flew to Jakarta, Indonesia. Facilitated a research methodology workshop for Ophthalmologists. Happiness in knowledge sharing!