Between thoughts and words

This is the story of a young woman who came to our clinic last week. She works as a housekeeping staff in a tertiary care hospital in the nearby town. She came with complaints of fever with severe body pains. There was no cough, no running nose, headaches. There were no symptoms to suggest that there was infection in any particular part of the body. It looked like an infection that is vague, usually referred to as an undifferentiated fever. There have been scattered rains in the area and dengue season is just about to begin. I started her on paracetamol to relieve her fever and body pains and asked her to drink plenty of water and fluids. That day, we had the physiotherapist's visit in the clinic and she went to consult him for a long standing neck and upper back pain. The physiotherapist had diagnosed a musculoskeletal problem in her upper back and advised her to undergo interferential therapy (IFT). He gave her the first sitting of the therapy and the lady felt immense relief.  O

V was a third year medical student. V liked singing. He has trained in classical vocal music for several years during his school days. V is not an exceptional singer. His singing is passable and clean, but not nuanced or technically brilliant. So in college circles, he was appreciated for singing, but never won any awards, nor was popular as a singer. He was reticent when it comes to singing, but rarely he did participate in some competitions and stage singing programs. A college cultural program was organised and V gave his name for the light music singing competition.  V was overall a quiet and introverted student in college and did not have many friends. As his other classmates who were singers, and some who were not singers, but were popular people, were practicing for the competition, V stood by the side and watched. He had an Aiwa cassette player with a headphone, gifted to him by his uncle a few years ago. He bought the cassette of the movie Kaadhalan and started listening to th

In 2015, Sanjai, a student and I conducted a research study on altruism among medical students. We wrote a protocol, had it reviewed by our institutional ethics committee, obtained proper informed consent from the participants and carried out the study. The questionnaire had some statements which the participants had to read and respond in agreement or disagreement and that would capture their level of altruism. After we finished the study, we published it in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. You can read the article in this link . Sanjai and I were thrilled when a reporter from local press contacted us after reading the article and wanted to cover the piece in the newspaper. She wrote up a piece with a rather scathing headline " Chennai medical students unlikely to be altruistic doctors ". This led to a cascade of problems for us. Firstly our institutional authorities came down on me heavily for allowing such a harsh report of our study to appear in the news, showing our

"Why have you weaponised the attendance in lectures against us?", "Why are you blackmailing us with the internal assessment marks?" I have heard young medical students implore with agony during one on one discussions about their experiences in college. In medical colleges most universities impose a mandatory attendance in more than 75% of lectures and 80% of clinical classes and a mandatory passing marks in internal assessments to make them eligible to appear in the final examination to pass that year and move on to the next one. While the intention behind this is to ensure that structured learning happens, such a mandate is oppressive to many students, even to those who are very serious about their studies.  Last year a group of first year medical students got together to write a letter to the Health Secretary of the Government of Tamil Nadu. Scanned copy of this letter went viral in all medical teaching social media groups and platforms. The students had appealed