Learner Profile
Priyanka Saikia

HMX Courses

Pharmacology, Physiology

Priyanka Saikia, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist, earned her postgraduate degree at St. John’s Medical College in Bangalore, India. She took HMX courses to review key concepts and expand her knowledge while working as a senior resident at the All India Institute of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Mumbai.

I was looking for some fundamental basic courses, because PM&R [physical medicine and rehabilitation] is always about the whole medical field…So I always wanted to brush up on some other specialties if I could get a chance.

In India our study is of PM&R is very different as it includes both medical and surgical rehabilitation. The subject is comprehensive, but the teaching is hands-on. This course helped me review all the medical specialties. Seeing all the inter-specialty interviews and [for example] the physiology of dialysis – which I’m familiar with – but hearing it being discussed by specialists, from the basic laws to a clinical scenario, made it a really practical review.

I really enjoyed it; it’s a different way of looking at the same thing. Especially pharmacology; you’re not [typically] really looking clinically at pharma during undergrad, it’s more theoretical. But going and learning it from a clinical trials perspective – and especially the novel therapeutic agents, which weren’t around during our undergrad, but which are promising for PM&R, so that was an exciting thing.

I hadn’t really gone through all these laws and the physics and chemistry behind them in so much detail, so that was good, the way it was taught with specific examples of everyday life. The clinical examples were all very relevant, what every physician has to know, so I think it was nice. I hadn’t expected the patient interviews, so that was very good – seeing how the interviews were taken and discussing with another clinician.

As a clinician, when you see that, I think you can take away more. Just to see a case discussion. So I got more than what I thought I would get. Also having a look at the OR [operating room]; those things, apart from the knowledge part of it – I got to see how doctors work over there, how they interact, the OR, and also the clinical trials. So I found all that very interesting.