International Physiology

In today’s health care setting, medical professionals need to update, find
evidence and fill the gaps in the existing knowledge with material from the ever-growing body of research literature. The paucity of time and lack of skills required for literature search makes this task difficult. The clinical librarian, medical librarian, clinical information specialist/scientist, and medical information specialist/scientist are terms used for librarians who assist in this task and search literature as a direct service. This could enhance improve care decisions and help in the practice of evidence based medicine.

Keywords: Lifelong learner; Evidence based medicine; Clinical medical
librarian.
 

Reflective writing gives an opportunity to think deeply about something
the person has learned or an experience he/she had. The importance of
reflective writing in medical education is immense. The Competency Based Medical Education (CBME) curriculum by the Medical Council of India (MCI)/ National Medical Commission (NMC) recommends reflective writing as a means of learning, especially the affective domain. Writing reflections is a process of learning through experience, the experience may be any event like a seminar, a meeting, a disaster, or a pandemic. The outbreak of covid-19 pandemic forced the Indian government to impose nation wide lockdown.The medical students are going through a difficult phase due to pandemic per se and due to the surrounding uncertainties of re-opening of themedical institutions, resumption of onsite teaching activities and examinations. As a
part of their learning, the students were asked to share their experience by writing reflection on the ongoing pandemic. The phase 1 undergraduate medical students reflected on COVID-19 pandemic, using the three steps model by Rofle, 2001 the three steps are- what happened, so what and what next. The current article is an attempt to summarise their reflections.

Keywords: Reflective writing; Reflections; COVID-19; CBME curriculum; Pandemic.

Introduction: Premenstrual syndrome is very common in women of the
reproductive age group and it significantly impairs their routine activities. In addition, it has been noticed that in recent years there is an early development of puberty and age at menarche is declining in children. Thus, we plannedto conduct this study to assess the prevalence of premenstrual psychologicalsymptoms and to determine its association with age at menarche in young females. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted after the approval of the Institutional ethics committee. One hundred and fifty health science students aged between 18 - 25 years with a normal menstrual
cycle duration of 28+/- 7 days were selected as study groups by pretested and validated questionnaire on premenstrual symptoms. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS for Windows, IBM SPSS Statistics 23 version.

 Results and Conclusions: The mean age of menarche of the study participants was 13 years. We found 91% had Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) among that 74 % reported at least one psychological symptom. The most common symptomsexperienced by them were altered sleep patterns (48%) followed by irritability(45%), mood swings (37%) and depression (35%). We also found that thenumber of premenstrual psychological symptoms had a significant negative correlation with age at menarche. The findings of this study highlight the high
prevalence of Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and the effect of early onset of menarche on psychological symptoms during the menstrual cycle. This study also emphasizes the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, average body weight and to incorporate adequate physical activities in childhood.

Keywords: Menstrual cycle; Menarche; Premenstrual syndrome;
Psychological symptoms.