The Never Ending Search

     You might have heard people say that they like to serve the poor and that’s why they chose medicine as a career. What you don’t hear is what they say at the back of their minds.

“I’d like to serve the poor” (In America)

“I’d like to serve the poor” (And have a million dollar house)

“I’d like to serve the poor” (I think)

“I’d like to serve the poor” (Nah! I took the course because I hate Maths)

     

     Hatred for Maths or hatred for physics is not as common among medical students as one might imagine. There are medicos who talk about maths and physics as if they were Hyderabadi Biryani and DBC respectively. One might expect as little maths in the Medicine curriculum as possible but every now and then mathematical formulae keep giving a guest appearance in the text books, some of which we are expected to mug. But there is one, should I say branch in medicine which operates on numerical data. ‘Research’ is where medicine gets as mathematical as possible.

     

     It was in first year that we were introduced to the concept of research. Until then the picture that would come to our minds when we heard the term research was a guy with huge goggles standing in a sophisticated laboratory observing a test tube for something to happen or Will Smith trying to inject something from the refrigerator into a zombie (dark seeker to be specific). All the doubts we initially had about research were cleared by this introduction. Further clarifications came in with the experience of classmates with research and with the long Epidemiology chapter in Community Medicine.

     

     Data, sample size, numbers, Greek letters, conference calls, research software, sensitivity, specificity are some of the terms that keep ringing in the ears of those who choose the path well-trodden. Boy it must really be getting into their heads (and lives)! An obsessed researcher may even make it a life style. He would wake up to read international journals over breakfast. He would then go to the local chai shop and brush up his knowledge with the local journals. His kitchen would be lively and exciting with some experimental studies and ‘cross sectional’ studies (of cut-and-diced vegetables). From his office there would be constant production of trash made up of old studies made obsolete by newer ones. The walls of his room would be adorned with his favourite ‘posters’. The dude would ask a damsel out (to a conference) and check-up if their stars are aligned in a stastically significant manner. In case of a break up, he would do a retrospective study and his girlfriend would publish a case report!

     

     The humour apart, ‘Research’ in its various forms has always played an important role in medicine. Physicians through the centuries, with their vast experience, have given us enormous knowledge and some of them did it in a language acceptable throughout the world, the language of numbers. Most of the content we study in medicine has been studied, researched and proven. And each new study, though making contradictory findings sometimes, is only trying to show a better way to approach/treat a patient. The numbers speak the truth and the truth has indeed set many sick free.

-Sam.