Tsi Tsi’s presentation

TM presented on the perception of female condom among males, It was so interesting talk, engaged each one in the auditorium. Interesting topic may attract many questions, and that exactly happened with Tsi’s presentation. She is very good in qualitative studies and has depth knowledge of concept. She perfectly knows how to deliver her knowledge to audiences. The representative comments by respondents were really eye catching, sometimes funny and humorous.

She is one of my best friends and I m glad that I could attend her talk.

Kate’s topic was  perception of homosexuality and then comparison between DUTCH population and US was interesting, and it surprised me how US cohort is different from DUTCH cohort.

1) Doctors need to understand the cultural environment to take good care of patients. This si because cultural environment ( food habits, perception of illness, perception of disease, cultural healthy/unhealthy habits, ) shapes one’s perception of illness and treatment.  For example, many times individual thinks that once symptoms are gone, there is no need of taking medications any more.

2) Physicians have to become keen listeners to know patient’s health history.

3) Physicians need to be good observers.

4) Physicians must be able to convey complex information to the patient in the most possible easy way.

I think qualitative methods course has the content to address above mentioned concerns. If doctors become good listeners, I believe that, the communication gap what exist between patient and clinicians, can be bridged and the healthcare can be made more effective!!

Following study has qualitative aspect. Researchers took qualitative interviews of Ca OPX patients and matched group. I read abstract so far, and I believe that this study might be suffering from many flaws. one important is matching process. Since smoking is strong predictor of OPX ca, in such case, how precisely other varibales like eating habits were controlled in the analysis is matter of interest as well concerns. I am wondering how dairy products offer protection against OPX ca. Need to do more literature search.

Toporcov et al (2012) Consumption of animal-derived foods and mouth and oropharyngeal cancer].

Brasil. toporcov@usp.br

OBJECTIVE:Evaluate the relationship between animal-derived foods and mouth and oropharyngeal cancer.METHODS:Hospital-based case-control study matched by sex and age (± 5 years) with data collected between July of 2006 and June of 2008. The sample contained 296 patients with mouth and oropharyngeal cancer and 296 patients without a cancer history who were treated in four hospitals in the City of São Paulo, State of São Paulo, Brazil. A semistructured questionnaire was administered to collect data regarding socioeconomic condition and harmful habits (tobacco and alcoholic beverage consumption). To assess eating habits, a qualitative questionnaire that asked about the frequency of food consumption was used. The analysis was rendered by means of multivariate logistic regression models that considered the existing hierarchy among the characteristics studied.RESULTS:

• Among foods of animal origin, frequent consumption of beef (OR = 2.73; CI95% = 1.27-5.87; P < 0.001),

• bacon (OR = 2.48; CI95% = 1.30-4.74; P < 0.001)

• and eggs (OR = 3.04; CI95% = 1.51-6.15; P < 0.001) was linked to an increased risk of mouth and oropharyngeal cancer, in both the univariate and multivariate analyses. Among dairy products, milk showed a protective effect against the disease (OR = 0.41; CI95% = 0.21-0.82; P < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS:This study affirms the hypothesis that animal-derived foods can be etiologically linked to mouth and oropharyngeal cancer. This information can guide policies to prevent these diseases, generating public health benefits.

Last Tuesday I met one of the best epidemiologists at Einstein. He is always in demand from physicians to PhDs, as he has great command over statistics.  I would say he is perfect at SPSS. He finished his PhD in Epidemiology from Columbia University in 1970s and had honor of working with great Epidemiologists like Dr. Susser.

He is so humble, polite, approachable and kind-hearted.

He shared his experience with me, how one of the physicians from Columbia University helped him, how she was the source for his first ever job and how he landed up in epidemiology. He had even chance of meeting Dr.Cohen (remember Conhen’s d).

” In late 1960s, when SPSS program was very new, it used to take 5 days to fix small error, which we people can do now in 5 seconds. Thanks to modern technology. “

TRUE…

Thanks Dr.C for sharing your experience and opening up my new approach to the data.

Dr.Alfredo is the Professor of Neurosurgey  at John Hopkins Univeristy , and Director of Brain Tumor Program at John Hopkins.  He even directs stem cell laboratory, seems highly accomplished  surgeon. I could see all students were genuinely interested in this topic. By the time talk started, Lecture hall was completely occupied. This implies two things; first the popularity of Dr.Alfredo and second students’ interest in research and neurosurgery.

DR.Q ( he is popular with this name)  graduated from Harvard and did his residency from San Francisco.

He was immigrant farm worker from Mexico, came with five dollars in pocket. Now he has 200 peer review publications. He is truly clinician scientist. He was there to impart wisdom to medical students.

“I am just humble servant to human society. ”       “We won’t have to do brain surgery in future.”

He suggests that any brain tumor should be resected completely, more than 98%. Anything less than that is futile work. Video shown by him during the lecture explains how one young married person, father  of daughter, gets his all motor functions back after the neurosurgery. Dr Q says  ” I am so glad that he can hold his daughter now.”

Yes, neurosurgery is advancing, and stem cell research can do wonders in future .

Despite advances in surgery, technology and equipment, he firmly believe that principles of surgery are not evolved. Surgery is the same as it was in the beginning of the 19th century. Only there is touch of modernity.

Then he showed the comparison graphs depicting survival rates after total resection, near total resection and partial resection of tumors. How Glioblastoma might need multiple resection because of its highly aggressive nature.

Finally I was so happy to witness the lecture by this inspiring figure. Thanks Dr.Q!

Just take a snapshot of Bollywood. One character in some movie asks so many questions..Probing, before you end, new question is ready. And finally respondants run away. Please do not follow such practice while doing qualitative interviews.

How and what–these questions have been flowing incessantly in my questioning styles, thanks to both my journalism professor and public health professor. I get most of the time vivid answers  from respondants, so that I can create themes out of it. PhDs around me are making me feel important and I am blessed to be in the country of education.

Just had brief discussion with qualitative studies expert. She says,” most of the people are not interested in qualitative as it is time taking.”  So far I am enjoying, I don’t know whether I will sustain my interest. I think I am eying on qualitative methods through quantitative prism , and here I guess I am doing mistake.  I need to remove those specs. Should I?  Let me swim in my data!!

Anything easy or difficult,  boring or interesting, lots depend on the instructor/professor. I listen to many students saying good things about respective instructor. Good instructor has the ability to turn boring course in to interesting, whereas , unfortunately, bad instructor has the ability to turn interesting into boring, What are the reasons??? Yes,  they are getting back what they  have expected of, they are getting back from the professor what they are supposed to get on their plate. Students are not there  to attend college JUST to obtain good grades.   The most important thing is to learn new skills so that it would help them in future for “future prospect” 🙂 American education industry sums up around 38 billion dollars, its not just to give students grades, BIG NO. To distribute them knowledge in most  possible  accuarate way, to guide them most possible CLEAR(instructions) way.

For example, Qualitative method course at my college is interesting and worth for investing time.

Today, I was wondering  how much radiation dose is required for every anatomical site.. How much dose for kidney, how much dose for brain…. WBRT. whole brain radiation therapy. Many things came to my mind. Before googling out, I keep my curosity intact. I interviewed one radiotherapist. Of course he wasn’t sure as radiooncologist are. But he told,” to my knowlege, it all depends on the size of tumor. I am sure about the spinal cord where radiation dose can’t exceed 45 Gy. For kidney, it is just like 2-3 Gy.” I packed up his interview in 4 minutes after getting valuable inputs. Then I was back in my physician mode, discussed things with one of the helpful colleagues and  started reading and correlated the info with my board type questions. Ya, I am making it fun and interesting.
Just when got back to my desk, I received encouraging email from Dr. AM 🙂

Thursday morning, great talk on interesting issue. I will write about this talk in other blog. I met one young Professor from Columbia, who is member of  UN NGO committee and doing extensive work in romantic relationships, Interesting topic! He shared his work with me, and I found him good at qualitative studies. We discussed Anthropology, and ethnography in brief. It was great  meeting such a great scientist today!