Poonam Agrawal

Role play is an important and interesting educational tool and it provides ample opportunity for learner to learn at both cognitive and affective domain simultaneously. Role play is favoured by both learners and instructors at the same time, as this activity breaks the monotony, brings variation and make the learner active and involved. Each domain of learning has multiple levels of learning that progresses from more basic surface level learning to more complex deeper level learning. Author wish to share her personal experience of implementing role-play as a novel approach to teach three learning domains and the progression of learning. Participants were faculty who were attending revised basic course workshop. All the participants were divided into three groups representing one domain of learning. Group one represented cognitive [knowledge] domain. Group two represented psychomotor [skill] domain. Group three represented affective or attitudinal domain. They were assigned task related to their domain and wee asked to express progression of learning of their domain. All the participants found activity very useful and enjoyed learning the progression of learning in an enjoyable manner.   Keywords: Role play, Progression of learning, Domain of learning, Andragogy, Cognitive domain, Psychomotor domain, Affective domain.

Aims and Objectives: Aim of this study is to create interest in medical students towards the subject of biochemistry and making them understand the clinical topics in biochemistry better. Objective of this study is to incorporate CBL teaching in “schedule time limit” assigned to teach a topic in biochemistry and assess the perception of student and faculty after teaching them a clinical topic in CBL mode. Materials and Methods: After getting inform written consent total 64 students enrolled for the study. Total 4 days were allotted to teach “Calcium and Iron metabolism” as per curriculum plan of Biochemistry. Didactic lecture was delivered on Tues/Wed /Thu. One CBL module was given to each group students were motivated to do self-directed learning (SDL). On consecutive Monday one student from each group was randomly selected to present the CBL in 10 minutes. Faculty then asked relevant question regarding the topic of CBL and all students were encouraged to respond. Each CBL was thus presented turn wise and faculty guided the discussion as to stream line the thought process of students. Next to presentation and discussion feedback form were distributed and were collected after 5 minutes. Data analysis was done. Result: Majority of students were of opinion that teaching biochemistry in CBL mode is more interesting and more satisfying. They feel more confident and motivated to do SDL. Even faculty were of opinion that student participation was more in CBL mode of teaching. Lesser percentage of faculty felt that extra effort and time required for implementing CBL in routine teaching. Conclusion: Large majority of students found that incorporation of CBL is an interesting approach to learn biochemistry Faculty found that CBL can be introduced for certain selective topics and felt that students will be more oriented towards the subjects. It can be very well incorporated in teaching biochemistry within the specified time limit and can be quite effective as shown in this study. Keyword: Case Based Learning, Biochemistry, Medical Education.

Introduction and Objectives: Hypothyroidism is a common and important occurrence during pregnancy. Untreated or undertreated hypothyroidism is seen to be associated with number of deleterious effects ranging from miscarriage, stillbirth to implication on intellectual development of the child. Different studies have shown variation in prevalence of hypothyroidism in pregnant population in their reports. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted with the objective of finding out the prevalence of hypothyroidism in pregnant women presenting to hospital for routine ANC (Anti-natal care) visit. Two hundred and fifty pregnant women presenting in first trimester of pregnancy were included in this study. Primigravida with singleton pregnancy were selected to form the study group. TSH, FT3, and FT4 were estimated by manual ELISA. Level of 4.5 mIU/L was used as cut off to diagnose hypothyroidism. Values more than 4.5mIU/L were considered as hypothyroid. Results: Fifteen out of total two hundred and fifty study subjects showed hypothyroidism as their TSH level was found to be >4.5 mIU/L (6% prevalence). FT4 level assessment was done in these cases to differentiate subclinical hypothyroidism from overt hypothyroidism. FT4 level below 8.5 pmol/L was considered as overt hypothyroidism and levels above 8.5pmol/L was considered as subclinical hypothyroidism. Conclusion: Duration/trimester of pregnancy, gravida status, socioeconomic status, all have possible role in deciding the prevalence of hypothyroidism in pregnant population. Keywords: Subclinical hypothyroidism, Overt hypothyroidism.

    Introduction: Aim of this study was to assess the level of ischemia modified albumin(IMA) in newly diagnosed untreated hypothyroid subjects. Materials and Methods:Serum IMA assessment was done by Barr et al method 30 newly diagnosed patients of hypothyroidism For the control group 50 normal healthy euthyroid adults were selected. TSH was done by one-step sandwich ELISA, and fT3, fT4 was done by one-step competitive ELISA method. Data were presented as mean ± standard deviation (SD). Results: Serum IMA was not found to be statistically different between hypothyroid and euthyroid control group. Conclusion:Contrary to the findings of majority of studies done on this subject, our study has not shown any significant elevation of IMA in hypothyroid subjects as compared to euthyroid subjects. IMA level in subjects of hypothyroidism has been a controversial issue since long. Assessment of cIMA should be done in association with other oxidative stress marker, and their correlation if any should be studied in a large cohort. Keywords: IMA, cIMA, Hypothyroid, Oxidative stress.    

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is the disease which has reached epidemic proportion worldwide. Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is an important and irreversible microvascular complication of diabetes mellitus which is characterized by persistent proteinuria, hypertension and progressive irreversible decline in renalfunction. The present study was carried out to stratify proportion of diabetic nephropathy as reflected by proteinuria, according to duration of diabetes mellitus as well as to identify the possible demographic, anthropometric and hemodynamic risk factors for the development of proteinuria. This crosssectional study was conducted on 74 patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Age, sex, height, weight, systolic and diastolic blood pressure and body mass index was recorded. 4ml of fasting venous blood was collected under aseptic precaution. Proteinuria was assessed semi quantitatively using dipsticks. All data is presented as Mean±SD. Unpaired student t-test was used to compare mean values of continuous variable. Total 37 out of 74 participants showed FPG 126 or more mg/dl out of which 22/37(59.5%) showed no proteinuria but 15/37(40.5%) showed proteinuria. Total 14(18.9%) participants out of 74 were obese out of which 57.1% (8/14) did not have proteinuria while 42.9% (6/14) hadproteinuria. There was clear association seen in frequency of proteinuria with the duration of diabetes. 45% of patients who had diabetes for more than 10 years developed proteinuria as compared to 35.7% and 10% patients who had proteinuria for 5-10 years and less than 5 years respectively. Frequency of proteinuria in type 2 DM patients was 24.32%. Predictors were BMI, FBG and duration of diabetes mellitus. Early measurements should be taken to control obesity, blood pressure and blood glucose to reduce the occurrence of diabetic nephropathy. Keywords: Proteinuria, Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, Diabetic nephropathy.