Raman's Blog

Mental Health problems are one of the leading morbidity even in the developing world. Most people would find it easy to talk to a religious guru than to a qualified mental health practitioner. Thus the sad state of affairs is that the patient ends up with a psychiatrist after receiving all the ill advice of every Tom, Dick and Harry. Depression is a very common psychiatric illness that can wear off many productive hours and even life of the patients. Millions of people around the world live with depression. In this context it is worthwhile to watch the video released by the WHO.

This is in view of the increasing violence by students against the teachers and school/college authorities in our country that I'm thinking aloud. I think moral science should be included in schools. Traditionally Indians respect teachers equal to God. Even those who don't believe in God should have some moral values. Also students should be taught to respect the laws of the country and to use legal systems like higher authorities/courts to meet their demands. This should not be viewed as moral policing though. 

In the western countries, I know that many websites exist where the CME credits can be obtained for free. Medscape provides such CME hours for free even for foreign doctors like us which can be obtained at the comfort of one’s residence sitting in front of the computer. Free of cost CMEs should be our top priority. In fact it is not possible for an average middle class doctor to go to distant places taking leave from work and to pay dearly for a couple of CME hours. Also the feasibility of traveling to distant places from rural areas and the discomfort of conducting a journey in overcrowded public transportation of ours should be considered. (Of course, I am not referring to doctors having their own air conditioned vehicle driven by another driver) I would appeal to the medical fraternity to take some positive steps in this regard. My suggestions are the following. 1) MCI should recognize the online CME hours granted by reputed portals like Medscape. 2) The government should...

Its been a long time since I put a post in my blog. I was quite busy with many things that required more attention than this blog. In fact I was wondering what my 100th blog post would be. I would just like to say to myself the intention of creating this blog. This is just an online platform to express my opinions and thoughts and share it with unknown strangers all over the world. It is more like a public email newsletter I guess. With the advent of google wave, google buzz and other emerging technologies, I'm eager to see the changing role of a personal blog.

It was another orthopedic case where I had to advice an elastocrepe bandage and pain killers. As usual I was about to return to my duty room when I noticed the nursing attendant put something away into the table drawer. I was curious to know what that precious item was which he was trying to keep in his posession. I opened the drawer and found the label from the empty container of the elastocrepe bandage which was used on the patient. It made no sense to me as to why a label should be stored along with other important items in the table drawer and I could not help but satisfy my curiousity by asking the attendant about it. He was at first reluctant to answer which only fuelled my inquisitiveness and he answered sheepishly. A medical representative has offered him cash benefits for each label of the bandage which will be used to replace the labels of the free samples that the medical representative is supposed to give to the doctors for free (free samples contain the label that it is n...

I used to see things either as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, right or wrong and nothing in between those two choices. But I am sure that I have to be more open minded to choices in between. What fascinates me is the way our brain looks and analyzes things. Necker's cube points to me the same idea. It is just a 2 dimensional picture which gives us an idea of a 3 dimensional cube. But if you keep staring at it you can notice that it seems to have changed it's orientation. It is just because either orientations are compatible with 3 dimensional quality of the image on our retina and brain can interpret it the same image differently. But no matter what the orientation is, it is the same image. now loading... the best visual content, for the best publishers Publish this image close ...

There is an interesting poll result in Reader's Digest asking 11,000 people in 10 countries when they last called their mother. Among the results: Thirty-three percent of Russians phoned their mother just once in the last month. Sixteen percent of Americans can't remember when they last called. But no wonder, India and China are top scorers.   Technorati Tags: poll

I'm definitely not a sports enthusiast and it is only with the curiosity of a lay person interested in facts that I wonder what is and should be the criteria for selecting a national sport. Hockey has always been considered the national sport of India . It truly deserved that status near the time of Indian independence. In the present time cricket has undoubtedly captured the Indian minds and I believe that those who gave that status to hockey; if were alive today will consider of awarding it to cricket. I don't think that there is anybody there to blame for the degradation of hockey in the hearts of the Indian populace, but just that change is the law of nature and is inevitable. The sport further suffered massive setback in the popular opinion after the team failed to qualify in the Olympics. I think it inappropriate to award the status of a national sport based on the past glory alone. If the popular opinion is what matters in the criteria; the deserving sport is obvi...

It is so easy for a lay person to create a personal blog and be in touch with family and friends. If the aim of social networks is just to help to socialize in cyberworld, a personal blog exactly does the same thing! I had to create a link with all my web 2.0 links on a separate tab, so that my friends can trace me in all those sites. The feeds from profile aggregators like Profilactic or MyBloglog serves the purpose of this unification to a certain extent. But then there are many such profile aggregators which again fails to serve the purpose of aggregation in a common platform. Then the argument is about sharing pictures, videos and other personal stuff and websites like Youtube, Flickr and other web 2.0 sites serve that purpose. But a personal blog is needed to combine all those services in a single interface and to share the contents in an organized manner. The use of these services is limited to storage of specific media or files online for a final output in a personal blog. RSS/A...