Courses and Admissions

St. John’s Medical College & Research Institute ICMR One-Week Course in Health Research Methods and Evidence Based Medicine November 17th – 22nd, 2014 This is an ongoing one week course being held once in a year since 2013. It is held in collaboration with faculty from McMaster University Canada and is accredited by The Karnataka Medical Council with 6 credit points. The next course is scheduled to be held from 23rd to 27th November, 2015. Participants: Health professionals (doctors, nurses, pharmacists), ethics committee members, industry professionals, regulators and health policy makers. The course was conducted from November 17th - 22nd, 2014. 36 candidates representing over 17 institutions from 2 different countries attended this workshop (India and Sri Lanka). Objectives: To familiarize a wide range of health professionals in fundamentals of health research methods and in evidence based medicine. Faculties: Faculties were from St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore; Fortis Escorts Hospital, Jaipur; All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal and McMaster University and University of Toronto, Canada. Methods: Interactive Lectures & small group activities (journal clubs, group discussions) The course had 21 interactive lectures, 4 small group Zen protocol discussions, 4 statistical practical sessions, 4 journal clubs and 4 project presentations. There were 11 lectures on health research methods, 6 on evidence based medicine, 2 on statistics and 2 on project management. The topics were on study design and methods, ethics, grants and publications, knowledge translation and health policy, project & data management, literature review, evidence based medicine and statistics with interactive practical in SPSS. This course focused on study designs (observational studies, randomized controlled trials), human research ethics, biostatistics and evidence based medicine. There were also sessions on research publication and grant writing, data management, regulatory aspects, health policy and implementation science. The session on systematic review and meta-analysis guided the participants on the importance of the hierarchy of evidence from research. The participants were also familiarized with basics in statistical methods and were given a practical demonstration of SPSS for the conduct of few key statistical tests. Overall, this workshop provided the participants a comprehensive understanding of the various aspects of clinical research and project management. There were interactive lectures on principles and practice of evidence based medicine from McMaster University and University of Toronto by Dr. Salim Yusuf, Dr. Gordon Guyatt, Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya and Dr. P J Devereaux. The speakers provided an overview of the evolution of EBM, practice of EBM with appropriate examples and the need for collaboration. The group activities included four journal clubs (30 mins presentation + 30 mins QA) and four project presentations (20 mins presentations + 20 mins QA) on cross sectional / registries, randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews and meta analysis and guidelines Each of the four groups discussed and developed the research question, methodology, statistical analysis and budget of a structured project on the allocated study design during the evening sessions of Zen project.