Evaluation of the effectiveness of seminar as an educational tool among the medical post graduate students

Background: The departments of medical colleges have a greater responsibility in making the study methods of their subject innovative, interesting and participatory for the post graduate students. One such method adopted is organizing seminars for the post graduate students. The post graduate education depends on self-learning. Knowledge acquisition through seminars forms an essential part of their training programme.Methods: This study assesses the role of seminar as teaching-learning tool by recording the perception of post graduates on seminars through a questionnaire based survey.Results: The scores for most of the items of a twenty point questionnaire were above three indicating the learning from seminar is satisfactory. Seminar methods of teaching-learning, in contrast to the traditional didactic class room lecture method, is more effective way of  learning, which is relevant to self-development and is also interactive. This method provokes discussions and debates which help post graduate students to voice their opinion and clear their doubts.  Conclusions: Many of the post graduate students feel that this technique of seminar programme is useful amidst some suggestions to improve quality. Thus the post graduate seminar method is a teaching-learning method that covers the three major domains of teaching i.e., cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills and is thus effective and well -accepted among the post graduate students.

Lymphocytic thyroiditis: a correlation of cytological grades with clinical, biochemical and ultrasound findings

Background: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis sometimes referred to as goitrous thyroiditis is a synonym of chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis or autoimmune thyroiditis. Chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis) is one of the most common cause of goiter and hypothyroidism, it is found most commonly in middle aged and young female, but can also occur in other age groups, including children. Chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis can be graded based on cytomorphology. In this study an attempt has been made to correlate the grades with clinical findings, biochemical levels and ultrasonography findings.Methods:This is a prospective study conducted on 309 patients in the Department of Pathology, Andhra Medical College, Visakhapatnam. The various parameters like patient’s clinical presentation, biochemical levels and thyroid ultrasound were studied. Fine needle aspiration of thyroid gland and grading of thyroiditis was done on smears. The grades were correlated with above parameters and the correlation indices were evaluated statistically. Chi-square tests were used for statistical correlation and p value of <0.05 was considered significant.Results: Most of the patients were females (297, 96.11%) who commonly presented with a diffuse goiter (263, 85.11%). Asymptomatic cases (193, 62.46%) and elevated TSH (194, 62.78%) were common. Most of the cases had grade I/II disease (299, 96.76%) by cytology. Conclusion:FNAC is a simple, safe and cost effective procedure and is a sensitive and specific diagnostic tool in diagnosing chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis. Cytological grading of chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis helps in assessing the severity of the disease and can predict the thyroid functional status. A combined approach of cytological grading of chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis along with ultrasonography and biochemical levels can detect subclinical hypothyroid states and provide a guide to therapy