2 March 2009, by Shashikiran
MEDiscuss<>Facebook
Now, MEDiscuss Talk is connected with Facebook. Facebook is one of the most popular and widely used social networking websites. MEDiscuss Talk enables everyone to share information about health and medical education.
This ‘connection’ between them presents the following advantages:
23 February 2009, by Shashikiran
When everything is going fine, nothing goes wrong. However, when we face ‘failure’ in life, everything seems to be going wrong. The same principle applies to our days of medical studies too (as it would to many other situations).
However, it is a reality that many students who ‘fail’ in medical course and eventually graduate do ‘well’ in their careers than many others who graduate without any failures during the course. This seems to be an anomaly at the face of it; isn’t our education and evaluation system meant to discriminate such qualities in students?
But we often neglect that failure itself is a catalyst for change. The life-changing change.
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Categories: Education
22 February 2009, by Shashikiran
When I was a medical student, the only PDA that I knew was Patent Ductus Arteriosus. Thank God, I didn’t have it. Now I know another PDA and thank God, I have it.
I am talking about Personal Digital Assistants, also called handheld computers or palmtops. 
It’s a growing trend. More and more clinicians are using this gadget for accessing information at the point of care. While some well-organized hospitals have even daily patient data available through secure Wi-Fi enabling paperless rounds, I use it as a quick reference tool for conditions that are not routinely seen, to refresh my memory about drugs dosages and interactions and as a medical calculator.
When talking to patients with diabetes and discussing about their diabetes control, I have always had difficulty in explaining the concept of glycated hemoglobin, with most confusing it with hemoglobin itself and wondering why it should be low!
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Categories: Diabetes, Technology, pda
20 February 2009, by Shashikiran
Right anterior chest with raised right hand
Last week I saw a middle-aged man who complained of pain over the right anterior chest. He had done some heavy exertion a few days earlier (extreme Yoga). While examining the painful area of chest, I noticed a feeling of something under the skin. On more careful palpation, it was a vertical cord-like swelling, just under the skin. On making the patient raise his right arm above the head, the swelling became visible too. Check the photograph on the right. You can see a longitudinal swelling with depression near it too.
Any guesses on the diagnosis?
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Categories: General
21 October 2008, by Shashikiran
This blog is relatively new. How much time do you think it takes for a post at MEDiscuss Blog to be available on Google? TWO minutes, flat. I have never seen such a fast indexing before!
Check the screenshot and note the ‘2 minutes ago’ in green. I just lazily searched after submitting the previous post.
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Categories: Technology
21 October 2008, by Shashikiran
I am an owl. I feel most active and creative at night. And my ‘low’ times are early in the morning and evening. But I was always reticent about this because ‘ideally’ a person is ’supposed’ to feel better early in the morning. I was feeling imperfect.
If you are also in the same boat, here is some good news.
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Categories: General
