Medical Research Seminar Held in Mandeville

The Mandeville Regional Hospital (MRH), on Tuesday (Sept. 29), hosted their 4th Annual Research Day at the Golf View Hotel in Mandeville Manchester, where some eight medical research papers were presented by different medical doctors.
Regional Technical Director for the Southern Regional Health Authority (SRHA), Michael Coombs, told JIS News, that the event was geared at professional development for medical professionals and keeps them up-to-date with the latest medical technologies.
“Internationally, there has been a focus on quality assurance, really focussing on improving the quality of health care in our health care services. A very important part of quality assurance is what we call research and development and ongoing professional development. This is for obvious reasons. We need research to identify cutting edge developments in the management of certain medical conditions, and it’s part of what we call evidence-based medicine, where we update the care that we give based on the evidence from research,” he informed.
Dr. Sheldon McKenzie. from the Department of Internal Medicine, at the Mandeville Regional Hospital (MRH), walked away with the top prize for his paper on ‘Cerebrovascular Accidents, the MRH Experience’. He said the research will help persons who suffer from strokes in Jamaica.
“This cannot be seen as an individual prize, but as a departmental prize because it was a collaborative work with many persons. There isn’t much data out there on the epidemiology of strokes in Jamaica, and I believe more study needs to be done first of all. And I believe it will increase the awareness of what actually happens to strokes patients, because very often patients are discharged from hospitals, and we very much forget about them,” Dr. McKenzie said.