Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram   

Clinical Club at MCH to be revamped

By M. Dinesh Varma

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM June 6. The clinical club at the Medical College, which serves as a forum for clinicians and students to review rare medical cases, is being revamped to encourage participation of senior doctors and unit chiefs.

As old as the premier institution itself (1951), the clinical club meetings have been held on Tuesdays as part of a time-bound tradition. The hour-long meetings, organised under the auspices of the Medical College's General Medicine Department, turn out to be brainstorming sessions where rare cases, diagnostic problems and management challenges are discussed.

By convention, it is the responsibility of post-graduate students to collect and present material relating to patients with unusual disorders at the club sessions. There are more than 35 PGs at any given time at the institution and one of them, by turn, prepares the agenda for the club.

The PG's have to pick six or seven interesting cases of the previous week from the deluge of over 600 cases reported at the six Internal Medicine units.

Many a diagnostic dilemma has been resolved at this club of clinicians. In fact, post-graduate students learn to match clinical features or pick up diagnostic clues that they would otherwise have missed.

One presentation at a Club session was on a rare case of meningitis, or infection of the cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF). The case involved a patient who survived a road traffic accident in which he sustained a fracture on the base of the skull.

Months later, however, the patient was back in hospital with complaints of fever, headache and vomiting--tell-tale symptoms of meningitis. Diagnosis showed that the CSF had got infected due to the hairline crack. After the hour-long session, scores of PGs, MBBS students and doctors left the hall enlightened about a rare way in which meningitis is contracted.

A special aspect of the Clinical Club is the "spotters'' section, where students are shown imagery of X-rays or CT scans and asked to identify the disease. In rare instances, a patient with an uncommon disorder is also brought to the hall. According to senior practitioners, the wealth of knowledge generated at the Clinical Club enhances the expertise of clinicians of various disciplines besides being instructive to students.

The lack of documentation of the presentations and discussions at the club has been a problem. Financial constraints have hampered the publication of synopses. In fact, the publication of the review meetings of the Mayo Clinic in the U.S. has assumed the status of a frontline medical journal.

However, for the past three years, the proceedings of the clinical club have been compressed into floppy disks. "We are exploring means to reach the messages that emerge at the club meetings to a larger section of doctors,'' says the MCH Superintendent, Mathew Thomas.

It is now being insisted that all unit chiefs should participate in the clinical club meetings. In the long term, it is proposed to provide tele/video conferencing through which peripheral physicians too can participate in the club ventures, Dr. Mathew Thomas says.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Southern States

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

• Clinical Club at MCH to be revamped
• For them, a step from the streets to school
• Chalachitra Academy wings clipped?

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu