Dear All

Exam time: March/April/May is always a roller-coaster period for moods and behavior. Studying hard for the exams in March, taking the exams in April, and the post-exam relief/relaxation in May: a few things hardly seem to change from one’s primary school days to tertiary-level education! It always pays to be regular/disciplined: all of us know this; however, acting on this has been the problem since time immemorial.

We continue with the annual review of best paper summaries of 2018 in this issue with lupus, Sjogren’s, myositis, scleroderma, and vasculitides. An important announcement from the office of IRA: we might be shifting to online elections from this year; the deadline for research grants is 15 April. We continue with statistics (this time on data) in the ‘Clinical Pearl’ section. Dr. Joy Philip, Senior Consultant Rheumatologist and a teacher who has always been famous for his tummy-tickling talks (we used to line up for his talks at IRACONs earlier!) lends us some advice and reveals a bit about his medicine/rheumatology journey.

Been to the Masai Mara Reserve, Kenya? Never mind, you can see the captivating pictures by Nigil Haroon: award-winning stuff.

The nucleus of this issue is the summary of patient awareness programs held in different places across the country. There are problems unique to our country, especially because of the skewed doctor:patient ratio. But we all need to remember and remind ourselves constantly of who defines us what we are—the patient. The patient must be the center, always.

With the hope that we will continue with such exchanges on and offstage and work together with our patients, I’m reminded of my own teacher, Prof. Dr. Ram Nath Misra’s quote to me in the OPD a decade and a half ago, and boy, it still holds true: “She hasn’t come a hundred miles for just methotrexate. She has come for you to listen to her woes!”

Let’s start listening more!

Sapan Pandya

Editor, IRA E Newsletter