All posts by Turacoz Group

Seminar on Medical Writing as a Career

News

333Turacoz conducted a seminar on Medical writing as a career for over 125 students with Biotechnology and Life sciences background on February 17th Wednesday at Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. Medical writing was introduced as an opportunity to pursue it as career. Different roles that a medical writer would play in the healthcare industry and how would their career graph look in 5+years. Students were encouraged to participate in certification programs that would enhance their skills and were mentored as how and which industry should be approached. An overwhelming response was followed by a request for workshop.

Medical Writing Workshop at Chennai

News

56666Turacoz conducted a Medical writing workshop on February 16th, Tuesday at Radisson Blu GRT, Chennai. It is one of the developed cites in India with brilliant minds who has produced some of the best doctors and scientists for the healthcare industry. The workshop covered three modules that included how to write publication articles like review articles, manuscripts, case reports etc. and what are the ethical concerns involved. The workshop gave the participants a practical experience by solving mini assignments and taking up the live assignments. The response was over whelming and we look forward to conduct these workshops more often.

Turacoz at InnoHealth Conference 2016

News

566Turacoz’s Medical Director, Dr. Namrata Singh was present at the InnoHealth conference held on February 5th at PHD house, Chamber of Commerce, New Delhi. She was one of the panelist for Day 2, session 3-Discussion on Learning from emerging and developed economies. She gave her view about the importance of data sharing and integrity, reforms or policies required by the government for the healthcare sector and how innovations in healthcare should be mentored by the people who have a medical background. Other panelist in the session were Dr. Saurabh gupta, Assistant prof. NIT Raipur, Mr. Mika Heinonen, founder- Medipoc, Finland.

Medical writing workshop at Dubai

News

5666Turacoz Healthcare Solutions conducted a Medical Writing Workshop in Dubai on 30th January 2016 at Radisson Blu Downtown. The participants included the doctors from various hospitals and medical managers from pharma industry. In this medical writing workshop, the participants learnt the basics of effective publication which included writing free of medical jargon, avoiding common grammatical errors, and basics of statistics while ensuring the scientific integrity of your work. It was an interactive workshop with assignments, MCQ’s and live case studies discussion at the end of all the modules. The doctors came up with their queries and the problems they face in writing a manuscript and case reports. We were requested to conduct these workshops again.

Turacoz at Arab Health conference

News

news1Arab Health Congress is one of the biggest, largest and most extravagant confluence for the pharmaceutical and healthcare professionals. It is the collective voices of healthcare professionals across the globe to convene, engage and expand the dialogue on improving the basics to the future of the healthcare industry. It caters approx. 7800 delegates and 1,80,000 visitors from all over the world. It is an amalgation of innovation, experts and the latest in the healthcare industry. Turacoz Healthcare Solutions visited Arab Health Congress held on January 25th -28th at world trade center. we networked with the healthcare experts and it was a great experience to share what we know and learn what we could incorporate in our learning of the industry.

Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness

Health & Fitness,

February 12 is declared as Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness Day annually. This day provides an opportunity to raise awareness about sexual and reproductive health issues and educate to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). STIs are one of the major public health concerns. Hence,

Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness Day is therefore an annual health promotion event which focuses on the importance of sexual health issues. Also these health awareness events create publicity for health issues and aims to improve the condition and help save lives, sometimes these events encourage preventative action against conditions becoming more serious.

Sexual health is a broad area that encompasses many inter-related challenges and problems. Key issues and concerns are human rights related to sexual health, sexual pleasure, eroticism and sexual satisfaction, diseases (HIV/AIDS, STIs, RTIs [reproductive tract infections]), violence, female genital mutilation, sexual dysfunction and mental health related to sexual health.

The objectives of this awareness include:

  • Improving the acceptability of safer sex behavior;
  • Decreasing the prevalence of STIs within the community;
  • Providing sexual health information, education and resources ; and
  • Improving health seeking behaviour to increase testing and treatment for STIs.

The goal of having an awareness week is to encourage people to consider the importance of maintaining reproductive health and talking about healthy decision-making with the people they care about.

 

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Screening tests may help find diseases or conditions early when they are easier to treat. It is also important that each of us is aware of our own bodies so if changes occur that don’t seem normal they can be checked by a health-care provider.

 

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The National Population Stabilisation Fund (Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh) has started a helpline to provide confidential counseling services and immediate answers to queries on sexual and reproductive health problems. For authentic telephonic information on Reproductive Health, Family Planning and Infant Health, Call 1800-11-6555. This helpline operates daily from 9am to 11pm. A team of health executives and doctors answer questions about sexual health concerns, sexually transmitted infections, contraception, pregnancy, infertility, abortions, menopause and puberty and can explain the functioning of the reproductive systems of males and females.

The helpline will also work towards removing popular misconceptions about sex, important in a country such as India where the subject is still socially taboo. When experimented with in schools, confidential information services have been shown to be in high demand. They can help in providing objective advice from a respected source rather than peers, the Internet and word of mouth, increase public knowledge of their rights and trust in public facilities, and can reduce the bridge between users and services.

Education can provide the social vaccine needed, offering a real chance at a productive life. Not only is education essential for preventing HIV, preventing HIV is essential for education.

 

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The role of air purifier to combat air pollution

Health & Fitness, , , ,

Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matters or biological materials in air, for a sufficient time that causes harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms or damages the natural environment. Clean air is considered as a basic requirement of human because it determines the health of the lungs as well as other organs. In order to extract 420 litres of oxygen that is crucial for human survival and function, a total of 10,000 litres of air enters the lungs every day. However, air pollution is continuously rising and responsible for significant threat to health worldwide. According to the World Health organization (WHO) report, around 7 million people died in 2012 as a result of air pollution exposure confirming that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk.

There are different types of air pollutants, which affect the living organism as well as climate in different ways, depending on their specific properties and ultimately effect the living organisms. Air pollutants mainly consists of gas and particle contaminants that are present in the atmosphere. Gaseous pollutants includeSO2, NOx, ozone, carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), certain toxic air pollutants, and some gaseous forms of metals whereas particle pollution (PM2.5 and PM10) includes a mixture of compounds.

Various scientific studies have associated with air pollution to a number of health problems, which include: (1) diminished lung function; (2) precipitation of respiratory symptoms such as difficulty breathing and coughing; (3) worsening of respiratory and cardiovascular disease; (4) increased susceptibility to respiratory infections; (5) adverse effect on nervous system, including the brain, such as Intelligence quotient (IQ) loss and impacts on learning, memory, and behaviour; (6) cancer; and (7) premature death.

While air quality regulations can reduce air pollution at a societal level, but individuals can also play important role to improve the air quality especially in their house. With a better understanding of indoor pollutants (e.g., dust mites, household pets, cockroaches, mould, environmental tobacco smoke, wood smoke, volatile organic compounds), a new and effective measures i.e. air filters have evolved. Indoor air filtration can also be provided by whole house filtration via the home’s heating, ventilation, or air conditioning system, by portable room air cleaners.

Currently available air purifiers usually have a multilayer filter system composed of a pre‑filter, a carbon filter, an antibacterial filter, and a HEPA (High-efficiency particulate arrestance) filter. The HEPA filters, which were traditionally used in hospitals, has indeed been a significant inclusion to home air purifiers. A HEPA filter uses mechanical filtration to remove airborne particles. A HEPA filter is standardized at a minimum 99.97% efficiency rating for removing particles greater than or equal to 0.3μm (1/83,000 of an inch) in diameter. This means that for every 10,000 particles that are 0.3μm in diameter, 3 will pass through the filter, and the rest will be trapped by the filter.

Although air pollution remains a worldwide epidemic and need multi-tiered prevention strategy, use of air filter which efficiently remove particulate matter, may result in significant health benefits to patients of asthma and cardiovascular disease. Besides, children, the elderly, and women will also be benefited, if indoor air quality is good because they spend more time in the home environment.

Publication Writing: What Gets Accepted and What Gets Rejected?

Medical Writing, ,

What is a Publication?

Publications are a healthcare solution which bridges communication of research conducted to the researchers around the world. To publish is to make content available to general public making use of text, images, or other audio-visual content. Publications include books, journals, magazines, newspapers, catalogues etc. A scientific publication is a written and published report describing original research results. Scientific communications aim to communicate new scientific findings in a clear and concise manner.

Barriers in Publishing!

  • Adherence to ethical and scientific standards
  • Format and Documentation Issues
  • Lack of expertise in research methods, incentive, and support for publishing findings
  • Quality problem: interventions are too well studied and do not represent “new knowledge”
  • Intervention does not have good face validity
  • Intervention was tested in a non-generalizable population/setting; sample too small
  • Study design is not robust; study is underpowered to detect significant effects
  • Outcome measures are too few, irrelevant, or inaccurate
  • Manuscript writing is unclear; intervention is not well described

Common Reasons Leading to Manuscript Rejection

A questionnaire based study reported the following to be the most commonly observed flaws leading to manuscript rejection:

 

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Publication Solutions at Turacoz

Turacoz Healthcare solutions based at New Delhi is a budding medical communications organization specializes in various communications including clinical research and regulatory writing; medical marketing solutions; and publication writing. Turacoz focusses on the client’s requirement and delivers projects as per the client’s specifications. At Turacoz, we believe in delivering projects which brings the client back to us.

Training And Development

Medical Writing, , ,

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” – Henry Ford

The most important aspect of our lives and our work is “continuous learning”. Nobody in the world can stop a person who has willingness to learn more and more. Be it school, college, office, or our personal life, everything is based on learning new things every day. However, learning becomes an easy task if there is someone to guide you and to train you.

And there comes the importance of TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT!

Training is defined as a learning process in which a person acquires knowledge and appropriate skills to excel in a particular role. This process helps in the development of an individual and thus, plays an important role in improving the status of an organization, society, as well as a country. However, it is a short-term process and is specific to a particular job/role/skill. On the other hand, development is a long-term process that helps to improve the overall dimensions of an individual, and makes him better equipped to handle any sort of situations.

The important thing is not only training, but the timing and type of training. Imagine a twelve class student being trained on the basic concepts of physics which he had already learnt in class nine, or a training imparted on waste management to the student of economics. Such kind of trainings would just be a waste of time, resources, as well as money. Thus, the most significant aspect of training is the correct type of training to the right people at the most appropriate time.

Usually when we talk about training and development, what comes to our mind is the “human resource development”, i.e. training and development programs that are conducted in an organization for enhancement of the skills of its employees.

So let’s see why do we need training and development in an organization?

  • To enrich the employees with latest technology and knowledge.
  • To match employee specifications with the job requirements.
  • To improve or enhance the skill-set of employees.
  • For personal development of the employees.
  • To improve the quality of work and minimize the wastage of resources.

There are different types of trainings that are conducted based on the requirements of the employees as well as the organization. So let’s look at the various types of training?

  • Induction training: To make the new employees familiar with the procedures, code of conduct, policies, and work profile of an organization.
  • Job training: To improve the knowledge and skills of an employee for his designated job.
  • Refresher training: To incorporate the latest developments, and upgrade the skills of the employee.
  • Safety training: To minimize the accidents and ensure safe working in an organization.
  • Promotional training: For training of the existing employee before his promotion.
  • Remedial training: To overcome the shortcomings of the employees.
  • Internship training: To provide practical knowledge to the students via combined efforts of the educational institutes and industries.

Usually, any training can be imparted via two methods:

  • On-job training methods: Includes job rotation, coaching, job instructions, assignments, and internships.
  • Off-job training methods: Includes lectures, conferences, seminars, case studies etc.

However, any training should not just be the dump of information. It should suit the requirements of the employees and serve their needs. We can say that training and development is effective only if it imparts new and necessary skills, is practical-oriented, and aligns the training needs with the goals of the organization

Some of the advantages of training and development are:

  • Improved knowledge and skills at the level of organization
  • Improved corporate image
  • Organizational development
  • Increased profits of the organization
  • Increased morale of the employees

Nevertheless, there are certain challenges associated with the training and development process like:

  • Difficulty in identifying the needs of the employees
  • Individuals might be resistant to learn
  • Expensive process
  • Needs time and resources
  • Equips staff to resign for better jobs

In a nutshell, we can say that training and development are very important in an organization for its continuous progress. Although it is a challenging and expensive process, training and development in the right direction can help the individuals/employees as well as organization in their growth, and thus, can prove to be a worthwhile investment.

As it is well said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions as a socially responsible company spreads the word and awareness and looks forward to collaboration or associations with other agencies/companies with similar goals and aspirations. We have a skilled and competent team of medical writers, clinicians, researchers and biostatisticians. Our clients include major pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and healthcare professionals. Our experience has been in supporting publications, creating regulatory documents, conducting observational studies, designing and creating for print and digital marketing as well as customizing sessions on medical writing. 

Grammar Hammer: Few Tips to Better Yourself in English Grammar

Medical Writing

Practice Flawless English for Good Scientific Writing

Knowledge of grammar is one of the keys to writing clearly and credibly. Whether you are learning a grammar rule for the first time or refreshing your memory, some basic points of English language and grammar need to be kept in mind before you start penning down a scientific document. The medical writer must know the target audience for a particular document. The scientific information in these documents must be presented to suit the level of understanding of the audience, namely, patients or general public, and the physicians. The main advantages of plain English are:

  • It is faster to write
  • It is faster to read, and
  • You get your message across more often, more easily and in a friendlier way

A few tips given here will help you to avoid common grammar and usage errors. These errors are the usual careless mistakes that are checked when a document is being edited and proof-read.

Avoid the Common Grammatical Errors

  • Use Formal Language in the Document
  • Do not write as you would in a medical register/log book. Use articles (a, an, the) wherever necessary, to complete your sentences; e.g., the patient came to the clinic; not patient came to clinic.
  • Many of us think in our mother tongue. While writing, however, avoid in incorrect sentence formations and check for such errors.
  • Avoid using slang/colloquial language that you may use in college, e.g., breast cancer, not CA Breast.
  • Make Clear Comparisons

When drawing comparisons, make it clear as to what or who you are comparing with; do not assume that the reader knows.

For example: We found that the virus affected children more [than adults].

  • Avoid Jargons And Clichés
  • Use of jargons in the document should be minimum. Jargons, if used, must be explained.
  • Get to the point and avoid clichés, such as

– “As you may already be aware…”

– “It is a well-known fact that…” etc.

  • Use Simple Language
  • Be punchy and keep sentences short (not more than 15-20 words in one sentence). Readers may lose track of the meaning if the sentence is too long.
  • Use active voice and first person as much as possible. Active voice is more reader-friendly. Passive voice unnecessarily complicates the sentence. For example, “We found that…” not “It was found that…”
  • Give proper commands wherever necessary. The most common fault is putting ‘customers should do this’ or ‘you should do this’ instead of just ‘do this’. To avoid them from sounding harsh, you can put the word ‘please’ in front. However, if something must be done, it is best not to say ‘please’ as it gives the reader the option for refusal of request.

For example,

  1. The document needs to be reviewed with track-changes. (Passive voice)

   Please review the document with track-changes. (Command)

  1. You should just think of it as a complete statement. (Passive voice)

Just think of it as a complete statement. (Command)

  1. Writers should aim to be precise. (Passive voice)

Be precise. (Command)

  1. They should be split where suitable. (Passive voice)

Split them where suitable. (Command)

  • Reduce Nominalization of Verbs

Nominalized verbs are the nouns which are often used in place of the verbs from which they are derived. Like passive verbs, they also make the sentences dull and heavy.

      Verb                    Nominalization

Complete              Completion

Introduce              Introduction

Arrange                Arrangement

For example,

  1. We had a discussion about the matter. (Nominalized verb)

We discussed the matter. (Verb)

  1. There will be a stoppage of trains by drivers.(Nominalized verb)

Drivers will stop the trains.(Verb)

  • Reach Out to The Readers
  • Be gender-inclusive in your writing. Do not use the general pronoun ‘he’ to include women; instead, use ‘they’.
  • If that is not possible in certain cases, use ‘he or she’.
  • Keep your tone conversational, and avoid words that you wouldn’t use naturally. Terms like ‘therefore’, ‘thus’, and ‘hence’ – should be used less frequently, as they prevent them from connecting with the readers.
  • An article with informative subheadings, bulleted lists and pointers is likely to grab more readership than a plain document with mere cluster of statements and paragraphs.

The Need to Improve Writing Skills

A medical writer is responsible for communicating scientific information. In addition to understanding the scientific aspects, he or she needs to present the information in a clear manner and at a level of understanding appropriate to the target audience. Use of grammatically error-free language, simple short sentences, and active voice with a logical flow of ideas can go a long way in making the information understandable to the readers and garnering huge readership.