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Balance Studies, Skip Sleep To Pursue Projects

Mumbai: For medical students Darshan Nayak and Akhil Goel, what started off as a group project on artificial retinas for the Bombay Medical Congress (BMC) as part of an inter-collegiate competition two years ago became an obsession. On the verge of completing their course from Grant Medical College, the two undergrads managed to balance studies with research, even if it meant bunking lectures or cutting on sleep. In the end, they even managed to get a paper published in the Tamil Nadu Ophthalmic Association Journal.

While they are looked upon as nerds whose noses are perennially buried in text-books, a minuscule yet growing tribe of undergraduates from medical colleges are working on research projects alongside their demanding curriculum. In fact, most of them find research and innovation is helping them survive the rigours of an MBBS syllabus.

In case of Nayak and Goel, the two were inspired by a conference they attended two years ago where they met research scientist Mark Humayun, who has already begun working on artificial retinas in the US. At around the same time, they also bumped into the chairman of the All India Opthalmological Society, Dr S Natrajan, who wanted to start an indigenous project on the same and was looking for people to work with him. The duo jumped at the offer and have been at it since.

“It is costlier to import technology from the United States than to develop it indigenously,’’ said Namita Nair, one of the members in the original team of 11. The project will involve inserting a chip into the retina of a person who has gone blind due to diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa or age-related muscular degeneration.

While it’s rare for MBBS students to get involved in multi-disciplinary research, many of them opt for short-term projects approved of by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). For Rohan Choudhari, a student at Nair Hospital who began research projects right from his second year of MBBS, it started with a newspaper clipping on Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, which propelled him to take up a project on catheter-associated urinary tract infections.

After having managed to bunk a few lectures and shuttle between the laboratory and the hostel during the project, Choudhari got a paper published in the Bombay Hospital Journal for the project. Later, in the Indian Heart Journal published his subsequent research on other projects.
“Passing MBBS examinations is no big deal. I prefer doing research rather than studying the curriculum, which involves way too much rote learning,’’ said Rohan. Kunal Patel, another student at Nair Hospital, who has worked on an ICMR project on the effect of TB on bones, felt most MBBS students are not able to attempt it (“although it changes the way you think’’) because there isn’t much spare time for research after poring over huge volumes of texts. He worked on the project both out of interest as well as to earn extra credit when he applied for higher studies abroad.

Dr. Meenal Hastak, a teacher with the Grant Medical College, felt that the trend of research projects began only five years ago, but is fast spreading. “Nearly 10 students in a class of 200 opt for research projects now. Earlier, this number was one or two,’’ she said.

“Students today have fixed goals at an early age. Awareness of research projects is spreading by word of mouth,’’ a teacher with Nair Hospital Dr Sweety Shinde said, adding the basic impetus came from the fact that students want to do something different from their regular curriculum. “As a student, I wasn’t aware of this avenue,’’ she added.

Despite a sharp rise, MBBS students pursuing research projects remains a mere 10% of the class. Priya Ramchandran, who recently passed out from MGM Medical college, feels that completing the portion and preparing for post-graduate entrance examinations itself too stressful to leave time for anything else.