It was my second year of residency. At 10pm I got a call from our consultant, saying there is a case of AML, probably High risk APML, asking me to do the needful. I saw the slide, our teacher was right, it was APML. Somehow I tried to remember things done for previous cases, gathered all the things to do from the textbook, cross checked it with guidelines available on net and wrote all the orders for that case by 2am. The entire night I was busy with such other 2 cases. The following day I felt, if there was a written SOP which I could follow, it would have been great. That would make my life easy and also allow better patient care. So I started preparing my own SOPs which were based on NCCN, BSH and other international guidelines. These SOPs/ notes served the purpose during my entire residency. My juniors also found it useful for carrying out their routine work.

When I started working as Assistant Professor at SDM Medical College, Dharwad, with increasing patient load, there was a need to make these SOPs available to all junior staff working in our department. Although keeping them in dropbox, worked well for some time, I felt if SOPs are available as book or website, they can be more easily accessed. When I submitted my proposal with sample chapters, to an international publisher, they agreed to publish it, with a condition that it has to suite the international community and I should get 1or 2 co-editor from US/UK/EU with H-Index of 20 or above. People whom I knew were not of so high H-Index and 2-3 people whom I contacted randomly did not respond back. Moreover, I was not comfortable with the changes that the editorial team was suggesting. So I dropped the plan of publishing with international publisher. When I approached an Indian publisher, they were not willing to publish the book due to too less target readers and also Covid pandemic related problems in medical books business.

When I was discussing these issues with my cousins Mr. Nityanand Nayak and Mr. Abhijit Nayak, a company secretary and web developer respectively, they happily agreed to help me. We decided to launch a website which would cover not only hematology, but in coming days would include other specialties of medical practice.

I firmly believe developing such protocols would ease the work of residents working in wards and other places. Many times, orders in patients’ case sheets are based on the memory of resident or treating physician. When about 20 pretreatment workup investigations and same number of actions are needed for treatment and supportive care, one tends to forget couple of points. This can severely impair patient care sometimes even amounting to death of patient. I hope this ready reckoner will help in taking appropriate and all the actions necessary without any chance of missing out some things. By this doctors can give more time for proper diagnosis and also for counselling of patients.

I hope this website will be especially helpful to junior doctors and residents, as senior consultants are often so much busy that, they do not find time to explain minor things to their junior colleagues. From understanding how a diagnosis is made to knowing how chemotherapy doses are adjusted, most of the things are new to the residents. Moreover protocols followed in India are extensively modified or are very different from those given in standard textbooks or online literature.

This website, at present, being an effort of a single person, is bound to have several lacunae. I insist all the readers to give their valuable feedback and suggestions, so that I can make appropriate changes and improve the quality of website. Please email your feed back to drgirishkamath at yahoo dot com.

I am thankful to Dr. Niranjan Kumar, Medical Director, SDM Medical College, for giving me opportunity to work in my home town, for encouraging all my writing activities and for creating a wonderful working environment. I am also thankful to my teachers- Dr. Shashikant Apte, Dr. Sameer Melinkeri, Dr. Kannan Subramanium, Dr. Neeraj Sidharthan, Dr. Manoj Unni, Dr. Raghuveer Prabhu , my colleagues at SDM Medical College- Dr. Girish Balikai and Dr. Deepak Goni, and to my family (Dr. Shraddha Pai, Mr. Chandrakant Kamat, Mrs. Vijaya Kamat, Rajesh and Shambhavi), for their cooperation and support. It is only because of them, I am able to do, what I like to do in my life.

Dr. Girish Kamat
Associate Professor,
Department of Clinical Hematology,
SDM College of Medical Sciences and Hospital,
Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara University,
Dharwad.