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NY Times covers Oncotalk

As an oncology fellow, I had the previledge of attending an NCI sponsored research conference on communication skills for oncology fellows titled: Oncotalk in Nov. 05.  It was recently covered in the New York Times.

See link: NY Times article.

on to oncology

it's been a while since I wrote on this blog.  It's been a busy month.  After finishing the boards, I started my month of Oncology service.  my senior colleagues had told us that there is a very steep learning curve, and they were right.  It's amazing how much I have learned in just one month.  I know that this year will be very busy, but my goal is to continue to chip away at the project (prostate cancer review) during this year.  

As part of my fellowship, I also am required to do research, and what I want to do is: be involved in various research projects to learn the basics of the reseach, and bring that to the group here.

I think many people have visited and joined the group in the last month, as always, I encourage everyone to put in their views out in the open, don't be shy.  I understand that many people may be hesitant and think "what will others think of me," <I know i did, it took me some time before coming up with the concrete idea and running with it>.  But as I have learned, when I floated the idea around, I did "meet" all of you who have similar interests. 

Please keep an eye out on our SAHRI Journal  for new projects and ongoing projects. 

Again, share your expertise and knowledge. 

Biren

Off till Aug 24th

My Internal Medicine boards are in three weeks, and I am going to take some time off and study for them.  You can still reach me via email, but I think the number of posts from will (I hope) decrease substantially.

Biren

Interacting with other organizations

I ran into Dr. Rajaram, a Pulm/CC attending at RWJ and Princeton.  Someone I had known from my residency.  She and her husband, Dr. Kandasamy are affiliated with International Medical Health Organization, a humanitarian charity.  I didn't get time to tell her much about SAHRI and the interactions we might have because of time, but I thought about it as I was going thruogh their website.  And these thought apply to many other organizations that exist which are focused mainly on humanitarian aid.

Few observations (again, many organizations like this one exist).

1.  Many of the members have health care background (physicians, nurses etc.)

2.  All of them have the drive to do help others in need

3.  Most help by giving their time and monies.

So, what is the interaction with SAHRI:

- SAHRI focuses on long term issues: changing health care and health management by encouraging relevant medical research...

- These organizations can be the community arms that help us translate the research

- these organizations can help us with the research in health behavior (one of the feedbacks I received is that it is hard to get south asians to participate in research projects).

- many of the organizations' volunteers have the medical background and expertise that can be leveraged to improve the research (recruiting patients, developing research questions, gaining better understanding of disease processes obtained from the experts in the community).

- collaborate with other similar organizations and improve their funding, obtain efficiencies in operations, better delivery of care

These are just the few reasons why organizations need to come together and all can benefit.

Biren

 

Is it all talk?

This is continuation of my conversation with Alpesh, See altruism  and changing behavior for previous discussion. 

One of the other comments Alpesh made was (and again, I thank him for his insight), "at some point in time [you] have to stop talking and start actually doing the work."  I think it is a VERY good point and goes back to the thoughts on the importance of having small successes initially to attract more resources to our cause.  I have been focused on making contacts with those resources that I think will be helpful, at the same time, working on issues thworking at are close to my own research interest - cancer screening.  I am doing that by using the wiki database - prostate cancer.

But as I do the review, I realized that while wiki is a good input format, we will need better output format ---  output is still an issue, especially for the purposes of reseach and we stilll need help find additional resources.  So, I go back to making contacts and finding resources.   It is a tough balancing act.

Underlying all of this is the belief that we need to utilize the power of numbers - find those who believe in this concept and issues.   Which will also expand the work we do and how fast we do it.  As you recall, when SAHRI started, it was going to be a local project at my residency, but then I got wise and thought of the global need and resources and how to utilize the power of numbers.

Biren

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