Guest Post: A Writing Workshop at Manipal College of Medical Sciences, Nepal

[This post is from Dr. Jitendra Prasad Mathuria, who attended the AuthorAID workshop held this year in Kathmandu, Nepal, and went on to organize a workshop in Pokhara, Nepal. Thanks very much! —Barbara]

The Department of Microbiology, Manipal College of Medical Sciences (MCOMS), Pokhara, Nepal, successfully held on 13 and 14 July 2011 an AuthorAID workshop titled “Research Writing Skill for Health Care Professionals”. The theme of this workshop was how to write a scientific paper and communicate with a scientific journal.

The workshop, which was supported by INASP, included lectures and small-group discussions. It was facilitated by Dr. Shishir Gokhale (Director of Basic Sciences and Head, Department of Microbiology, MCOMS) and Dr. Jitendra Prasad Mathuria (Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, MCOMS, and Executive Editor in Chief, Asian Journal of Medical Sciences).

Twelve participants, including postgraduate students as well as faculty members, from departments at MCOMS attended the workshop. The workshop was inaugurated with lighting the lamp by Dr. P. K. Chakraborty, Director, Manipal Teaching Hospital. In his inaugural address, he emphasized the importance of publishing scientific papers for health care professionals.

The lectures dealt with the approach to writing project proposals, the structure and components of scientific papers, the selection of suitable journals, and so forth. The small-group discussions, by groups of 4 members each, focused on the important points to remember. The discussions also included questions and suggestions. Afterward, a representative of each group presented highlights. Pre-workshop and post-workshop tests revealed that the workshop contributed significantly to the participants’ understanding.

At the end of the workshop, each participant received a certificate. The feedback from the participants was very encouraging. The participants requested workshops on related topics, such as presenting papers at conferences and writing other items (for example, theses, dissertations, and case reports). This has encouraged us to plan for more workshops to suit participants’ interests.