Muhammad Medical College (MMC), a constituent college of Ibne Sina University (ISU), has become an icon in the field of medical education and healthcare services in Pakistan. Not only it provides quality formal medical education, but as part of its innovative activities, it keeps holding several non traditional activities to stimulate and provoke scientific curiosity among its students and teachers throughout the year. It therefor came as no surprise that under the leadership of its Chancellor Professor Syed Razi Muhammad, ISU received the prestigious national Healthcare Excellence Award 2025 recently at Lahore from Federal Minister of Health early April this year.
As part of these activities, for which ISU is now well known throughout its history on national level, and in particular throughout the existence of MMC since its inception in 1998, it held its 15th Annual Mirpurkhas Seminar in Medical Sciences on 30th April 2025. It is its mission to provide excellent medical educational activities to the medical students and doctors belonging to itself in particular but to all doctors in the city of Mirpurkhas via open invitation, completely free of cost. The seminar was attended by Final year students along with junior and senior doctors of all clinical departments. ISU strongly believes that participating in such seminars plays an essential role in the intellectual growth of future doctors, seeing high quality advanced talks coming from experts in a variety of medical specialities.
Programme started with recitation of verses from the Holy Quran. A Final year student Mr Talha had the honour of doing the recitation. A relatively recent addition to the Department of Diabetes and Endocrinology, Assistant Professor Dr Sarwat Anjum then took charge and invited Visiting Professor Dr Syed Zafar Abbas to give an introduction of the programme ahead. Professor Zafar Abbas gave a brief history of these seminars which started 15 years ago, and have been working its way through GI Medical Seminar, General Medical Seminar and have now evolved into Seminar on broader Medical Sciences, involving experts from all specialities. Dr Sarwat Anjum then invited Professor Dr Qamar Habib, Head of Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics to the stage. Dr Qamar Habib gave an overview and update on “Management of New Onset Hypertension in Pregnancy”. Her talk included pathophysiology of this condition, difference between Hypertension in general and when it happens in pregnancy, and how the management guidelines are different in these two scenarios with their rationale. She answered the questions from audience after her talk. Head of Department of Medicine, Professor Dr Abdul Qadir Khan delivered a talk on “Current Management Guidelines on MASLD/MASH”. With the help of various studies and figures, he explained the relatively new and updated nomenclature of this condition, and the new advances including those in its treatment. He also indicated that there was an important clinical difference in the interpretation of Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference measurements of Asians and Caucasians. Head of Surgical Department and Pro Vice Chancellor of ISU Professor Dr Aijaz Memon gave a talk on “Enhanced Recovery after Surgery” (ERAF). He discussed various pre operative, operative and post operative measures to mitigate the chances of complications and tips on promotion of rapid and improved recovery following various surgical procedures. He also discussed the difficulties faced by surgeons in Pakistan to fully implement such changes due to lack of required resources, but more importantly because of long established surgical culture. However, he was quick to point out the practical advances at MMC Hospital (MMCH) in this respect. Head of the Department of Paediatrics Professor Dr Hasan Memon then gave an interesting update and comparison of present and past medical practice on the management of Meningitis with title of his presentation “Septic Meningitis in Children: Management in mid 70s and now”. He described various treatment improvements and prevention with the help of various vaccination. Students and doctors at MMCH are lucky to have not only the newly qualified consultants as their teachers, but also very experienced clinicians who have the advantage of their own time in the field of medicine to be able to see and in fact participate in the practice improvements spanned over decades.
Over the previous 2 weeks, ISU had seen a 2 week Intensive Gastroenterology (GI) and General Internal Medical (GIM) Course conducted by one of its Visiting Professor from UK, Professor Dr Syed Zafar Abbas. He was then invited to stage and his task was to go through all the activities he had arranged in ISU over the last previous 2 weeks. He spoke about the crash course he had conducted in GI and GIM with Final year medical students. There had been 10 lectures, each one hour long, on a variety of topics in GI and Hepatology. Alongside his lectures, he had arranged final year students to take part in delivering important facts on 34 different GIM topics in the form of a short presentation in their classroom, particularly Medical Emergencies, under his supervision. Additionally, he had held 2 Clinico-Radiological meetings with junior and senior doctors of ISU from all departments, lasting hour and a half each. Final year students also took active part in them. He is also a certified instructor of UK Resuscitation Council (UKRC), and on 28th April, he conducted a Basic Life Support (BLS) Workshop. It was attended by Final year medical students, but also by students from Muhammad Dental College (MDC), Muhammad College of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Nursing college and doctors from Civil Hospital Mirpurkhas, some private hospitals within Mirpurkhas and doctors from Pakistan Medical Association. On 28th April he conducted a post-course test of Final year students, comprising of 70 MCQs (35 each from GI and GIM). After the completion of the test, he held another session with students and explained the correct answers. On 29th April, under his supervision, Final years students who were all divided in groups of 4, and took an enthusiastic part in a Medical mini-Symposium with permanent theme (“Students as Teachers”). Here the students presented on 24 different topics in Medicine, Surgery and Gynae/Obs in the form of Oral and poster presentations. They were judged by a panel of senior doctors to be awarded for 3 best presentations next day after this Annual Seminar with recognition shields not only for the best presentations, but for the overall performance including presentation in classroom, post course MCQ test and mini-symposium presentations. After his talk he received a standing ovation by the students and he thanked all for their help in delivering his annual tasks, particularly to the students.
Various doctors from the other hospitals in the city of Mirpurkhas also attended this seminar. All presenters were given recognition shields and traditional Ajrak by senior faculty. This scientific session was followed by a break for Mentor’s sessions, lunch and prayers.
After the break, students and teachers reassembled for Prize giving ceremony. Following students excelled in their performances and were recognised:
Poster presentations: Joint 3rd prize – Acute Pancreatitis (Muhammad Isamil Zulfikar, Muhammad Aman, Muhammad Usman, Rehan Ahmed). Joint 3rd Prize - Diabetes Mellitus and its Types including the newly recognised Type 5 (Aiza Malik, Fakhara Siddique, Mah Noor Ameer, Nisha Malik). 2nd best poster - Meningitis (Anmol, Fiza, Tehreem Fatima, Vaneeza Imtiaz). First prize for poster presentation - Alcohol Liver Disease (Maliha, Shurooq Siddiqua, Yogita Kumari, Tooba Sethi Khawaja).
Oral Presentations: Joint 3rd best prize – Smoking (Aiman Khalid, Fatima Abbasi, Mahrukh, Sadia Zawar). Joint 3rd best prize – Pulmonary Tuberculosis (Ahsan Ali, Muhammad Mohib Zain, Muhammad Usman, Zohaib Ramzan). 2nd best prize – Bronchogenic Carcinoma (Mehsoon Ahbdul Rasheed, Saima Shahzadi, Samina Shahzadi). Best oral presentation prize – Upper Gastrointestinal Bleed (Maliha Jabbin, Muqqadas, Shawal, Umme Farwa)
Individual Best Overall Performance over all areas: 3rd Best Prize with 83 out of 100 marks – Laiba Ibrahim. 2nd Best Prize with 85/100 marks – Saima Khuda Bukhsh. Best Overall Performance Award with 87/100 marks – Wajeeha Jaafer.
All senior faculty was on the stage congratulating and giving the prizes away to all above. Chancellor himself, Vice Chancellor Pro Vice Chancellor, Principal and senior professors were all there in the stage to congratulate and encourage these students. Additionally, it was recognised that it was a significant achievement in its own that a final year medical student participated in this activity and had courage to come on stage and present (“teach”!) their senior teachers and their fellow students on medical topics. It is hoped that this will go some way in building confidence and will give a sense of pride to students and will help them in their future role. All those who had taken part in mini-symposium were therefore given recognition shields for their participation.
The Chancellor of ISU Professor Syed Razi Muhammad addressed the audience. He congratulate the students on winning their awards, and stressed that everyone who took part in this activity was a winner, and not just those who were declared best by the judges of senior doctors on the quality of their performance. He also highlighted the importance of consistency and working hard to be able to perform well in exams and in life. He said that the way a doctor behaves with his patients was at least as important as their medical knowledge itself. Professor Razi Muhammad urged on the senior faculty and administration to consider doing similar Intensive courses in all subjects – both clinical and pre-clinical – in addition to regular year-long teaching activities. He also emphasised on the importance of keeping the teaching language and methods appropriate for the level of audience, quoting some Islamic ahadith and traditions. He thanked Prof Zafar Abbas and the team who made the last 2 weeks Intensive Course in GI and GIM such a great success, and hoped that Universities all over Pakistan would conduct high quality programmes like this on regular basis to ensure a bright future for the country.
