A first of its kind in medical colleges in Jammu and Kashmir, two-day workshop on Systematic Review and Meta Analysis was conducted by department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College Srinagar which was attended by faculty and resident doctors of various institutions and departments including GMC Srinagar, SKIMS Soura Srinagar, SKIMS Medical College Bemina Srinagar and directorate of health services Kashmir.
Dr. Partha Haldar, Additional Professor, Centre for Community Medicine, AIIMS New Delhi was the visiting guest faculty for the two day workshop.
Prof. Masood Tanvir, Principal and Dean, Government Medical College Srinagar who inaugurated the workshop and and presided over the Valedictory while appreciating the Community Medicine department of GMC Srinagar for organising the first ever workshop on Systematic Review and Meta Analysis which is at the apex of the pyramid of strength of evidence of scientific research reiterated that quality research which shall be beneficial to patient care and enhance & improve scientific rigor shall be carried out with carefully conceived research questions.
Dr. Partha Haldar dealt exclusively on topics involved in systematic review and meta analysis.
‘Medical science can not progress until existing evidence can be utilised to the optimum. Not everyone or not every doctor can do this. This work requires specialisation and training in very systematically scrutinising the available breadth of the vast literature and meticulously synthesising the evidence. For the first time in Jammu and Kashmir, we trained a select group of doctors who will be not only able to do a systematic review but also publish the findings in international journals,’ said Dr. Partha Haldar, who has published over two dozen systematic reviews and meta analyses.
Over the years, we conducted 16 research methodology workshops for faculty, a series for post graduate scholars and a workshop on qualitative research.
However, this time we went to higher realms of research which requires higher orders of research analysis and synthesis, and we shall continue to conduct workshops of such levels, said Dr. S. Muhammad Salim Khan Professor and HOD Community Medicine GMC Srinagar and organising chairman of the workshop.
The workshop was conducted under aegis of J&K Chapters of IAPSM and IPHA and also accredited with J&K medical council and awarded eight CME Credit Hours.
Medical decision making depends upon such high level of reviews of medical literature which is technically known as systematic review and meta analysis.
The advantage here is that instead of taking a medical decision based on one or two studies, it pools the information across a large number of studies making the sample size very large and this decreasing the quantum of errors.
