Sublime White Coat

Whom am I addressing
basically this is for 4th year GMC students … i will be specific about teachers favourite test and viva questions … but any medical student can benefit from general guidelines about the subject …

Why me
As being topper of class and obtaining 3rd position in KMU in 4th year … i think its my responsibility and duty to share my knowledge and study techniques and tips … so that my junior students should get more benefit in less time and i believe in sharing … knowledge spreads by sharing and sharing is caring …
i stood 1st in community medicine… obtaining highest marks in theory as well as viva in our class …

Dedication:
These guidelines are dedicated to my father Dr. Hussain Babar. Everything that i do and everything that i have belongs to him and every height that i reach in my life … all the credit goes to him … and he has been the best teacher, the best friend and the best father … i wish everyone is blessed with a father like him … if you have benefited even a tiny bit from my suggestions … as a token of gratitude please pray for my father’s health and happiness …
The love between father and son is always hidden … they never express it but is always there… no one can be more sincere to you than your father … take care of your father … you are in this world because of them …

Requests:

I request Farhat ullah Bettani and all my classfellows specially fawad, qaiser, shoaib and imran to include their inputs into these guidelines…

WHICH BOOKS TO STUDY :
these study tips are not an alternative to your course books… so study them …
1) Excel ( for most of topics, but it has many mistakes, if you do not understand any topic go to park and illyas )
2) Park’s textbook of Prevention and Social Medicine ( Must for epidemiology )
3) Illyas’s Public health and community medicine ( Must for Biostatistics and HMIS )
4) Zahid Jan compiled papers ( these are chapter wise and gives you very good idea about important questions) and also new pattern papers
I have uploaded Zahid Jan papers on net for important questions of both pathology and community medicine … Zahid jan papers can be downloaded by clicking on Zahid Jan compiled papers present in the downloads section.
Basically it does not depend upon the book … but it depends upon the reader how he studies the book …
Whenever you have difficulty in choosing a book … Always read same topic from both the books and then choose the book according to that topic …
Always try to use a single book .. you will be less confused … more focussed … more quick to learn …

DOWNLOADS SECTION:
The following files you can download by clicking on them …
1.BIOSTATISTICS Community Medicine GOMAL MEDICAL COLLEGE Notes.doc
2.DISASTER.doc
3.EPI International schedule.PDF
4.EPI schedule of Pakistan.doc
5.EPIDEMIOLOGY.doc
6.Facts about Flood.doc
7.Field Journal.doc
8.Inferential Statistics.ppt
9.OUTLINE OF THE STEPS IN RESEARCH STUDY.doc
10.Research Proposal.doc
11.Surveillance.ppt
12.Zahid Jan Papers Chapterwise for 4th year MBBS upto 2007

Most of them are notes of community dept. two lectures …
But most imp things are
1. Research Proposal.doc
2. Field Journal.doc
these are my research project and field journal … you will have plenty of help in making yours research project and field journal … by looking at them as samples …
if you still have difficulty in your research project… you can ask here or for a detailed answer email me at khalidshakeelbabar@gmail.com … please be patient for replies …

HOW TO STUDY COMMUNITY MEDICINE:
Community Medicine is a general subject …. sometimes when you study community medicine … everything looks the same to you … every topic looks the same … and you get confused how to differentiate between the topics … and you are asked about definitions and almost every word has a definition … so you are like how am i gonna remember all that definitions … and what is the importance of this subject … its not even applied to our community … so why am i reading this … the subject seem to be useless to you … and you stop studying it …
Community is a general subject, so if you are a talkative person … its the most easiest subject for you … you can talk all day long … and its you community medicine subject … most of us have general concept about community and health … in community medicine it is just arranged stepwise and in sequence ,,, so this subject you know already … you just have to arrange it in your mind to write it … its so simple … some of our friends did not study for the tests but used to get pass because of their general concept ( but this does not apply to all :p ) … and by reading community text books you can develop if you think you are missing general knowledge and common sense … its not applied to our community so that’s why its more important to read bcoz you can apply it in future … one more aspect of community of immense importance is research … you cannot run away from it … you have to do it in your life ,.. try to learn it here … it will be easy for you in future … and you have to pass the subject if you want to become a doc and everyone has passed through this phase and you can also do it … don’t lose faith …
Every topic is so much interlinked that if you have general concept you can write about any topic …
Epidemiology and Biostat are most imp chapters … 60 percent viva is from them and atleast 2 – 3 questions in exam come from these chapters ..

Epidemiology:
Start Community from Epidemiology … it is the most important topic … first read it from notes of epidemiology ( uploaded as well ) for concept … then read it from park … you will remember it for a long time …
Read Incidence , prevalence and then read just one study design one day … there are five studies designs … you can finish them easily in 5 days … cover other aspects of epidemiology like steps of epidemic investigation … definition of epidemic, endemic and pandemic along with examples … do surveillance and sampling … and at the end if you have time cover uses of epidemiology … it covers your basic epidemiology …
Viva questions for epidemiology ?
1. name epidemiological study designs ?
experimental, descriptive, case control, cohort, comparative cross sectional. ( just name them , dont classify them. Common MISTAKE)

2. what epidemiological study design is followed in your research project and why have you chosen it?
most of students or almost all of them follow descriptive study design, if you have followed any other please mention that … reason of chosing descriptive study design is that it is easier, does not have any special requirements , can be completed easily in due coarse of time

3 . differentiate between retrospective cohort study and case control study?
in cohort study we go from cause to disease … and first of all there is selection of exposed and unexposed subject.

while in case control study we go from disease to cause … and first of all there is selection of cases (diseased) and non diseased (controls) and they are asked about exposure of risk factor …

in retrospective cohort (disease has already occurred) … we go into history … and select EXPOSED and UNEXPOSED subjects from RECORDS and then follow them farwards in history up to appearance of DISEASE. so, here also we go from cause to disease and first select exposed and nonexposed… but in here disease has already occurred and we go through records …

4. what is nested case control study?
from an ongoing cohort study cases are taken and are followed as case control study , it is called nested case control study

5. what are the steps of cohort (or any other study can be chosen) study ? please refer to notes or text book

6. what are the disadvantages and advantages of cohort (or any other study can be chosen) study? please refer to notes or text book … Most often students forget the main disadvantage of cross sectional study, which is loss of temporal association.

7. what is the best study design? experimental study design

8. what is bias ? its types? what do you think about berkesonian bias ?  park page69 20th edition.

9. what is the single most important disadvantage of cohort study ? Ethical Problems

10. what is the most important or ongoing cohort study ? The Framingham Heart Study

11. what is the difference between exposure and risk factor?

Risk Factor is a thing which increases the chances of getting a disease. While exposure does not itself causes disease when exposure and favorable environment combine they form risk factor and it causes disease.

12. what is the difference between cause and risk factor? Risk Factor has three types … it can be causative (eg smoking for lung cancer) or contributory (eg physical inactivity for Coronary Heart Disease ) or predictive ( illiteracy for perinatal mortality)

13. what is ecological study ? It is Analytical Study which has POPULATION as UNIT of study (others have INDIVIDUALS as UNIT of study)

14. what is matching? Park p68 2othedition

15. Differences between cohort and case control ? Park p75 2othedition

16. what is surveillance? its types ? what is sentinel surveillance? please see Surveillance lecture from downloads section

17. name the steps of epidemic investigation ? Park p118 20th edition

18. which two study designs are used in epidemic investigation? Descriptive (at step 5 & 6) and Case Control  (at step 6 & 7) study design

19. What is incidence study design? ( by which study design we can find out incidence) Cohort Study Design

20. What is prevalence study design ? ( by which study design we can find out prevalence ) Cross sectional Study Design

21. Define sampling ? its types ? give an example of random sampling used in our social setup ? for definition and types refer to notes … eg is that of lottery system.

22. Types of Blinding ? Park p79 20th edition or see notes

23. difference between incidence and prevalence? mainly incidence is of new cases while prevalence is of existing cases (new plus old ) for more differences see notes

REMEMBER for generation of hypothesis we do Descriptive Study, while for testing hypothesis we do Analytical Studies ( cohort or case control or comparative cross sectional study), and for proving hypothesis we do experimental study.

COMMENTS and QUESTIONS are welcomed: But be patient for the ANSWERS . if there were NO COMMENTS and QUESTIONS the post will stop here… it wont continue… everyone needs a little bit of encouragement
AND if you find any MISTAKES please let me know … i will be really glad … updated on 21/7/ 2011