About the Course

With the restructuring of health care in India, one of the major changes in patient care has been a shift from sub-specialty care to primary care. Despite major progress in the development of effective therapies to reduce mortality and morbidity from cardiovascular disease, it is becoming the leading cause of mortality in India, where heart ailments have replaced communicable diseases as the biggest killer. According to recent data, approximately 30 percent of the urban population and 15 percent of the population living in rural areas, suffer from high blood pressure and heart attacks. According to government data, the prevalence of heart failure in India due to coronary heart disease, hypertension, obesity, diabetes and rheumatic heart disease, ranges from 1.3 to 4.6 million, with an annual incidence of 491,600-1.8 million.

Although effective treatments exist, there is a wide therapeutic gap between guidelines and practice. Reducing this gap has the potential to save lives. General Practitioners are at the forefront of assessment, management and follow-up of patients with cardiovascular disease. Over 50 percent of the patients suffering from a heart attack die before they reach the hospital. General Practitioners can play a very important role in saving these lives.

IMA eVarsity has launched the Fellowship  in Primary Care Cardiology to equip such first-consult doctors, with the latest clinically-relevant information, and to mentor them in competently handling all aspects of cardiovascular disease.

Objectives of the Program

The One year Fellowship  in Primary Care Cardiology aims at providing a General practitioner with comprehensive up-to-date knowledge and skills in the prevention and diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease in their clinical practice.

At the end of this course, the General Practitioner will be able to provide better patient care through an increased ability to:

• Identify risk factors for development of coronary artery disease (CAD) and advise optimum primary prevention measures
• Understand various testing options and data on screening studies for CAD and how to apply this information to the management of patients at risk for CAD
• Evaluate patients with essential hypertension, malignant hypertension and secondary hypertension
• Provide primary care and follow up of patients with various Cardiovascular diseases
• Identify congenital cardiac diseases in children, and initiate management strategies for such
• Determine when to refer the patient to a Cardiologist/other specialist

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Recommended Background / Entry Requirements

Recognised the need of the hour, of turning graduate doctors into family physicians, who thrive on building relationship with the patients and family, rather than treat them as numbers, IMA eVarsity has specially crafted these courses for experienced practising doctors – doctors who could not take up post graduation for whatever reason, doctors who are so busy with their practice that they do not find time to attend continuous medical education. These courses are made available for the MCI-registered doctors.

Course Syllabus

• Applied Anatomy and Physiology
• Epidemiology of CVD and Preventive Cardiology
• Electro Cardiogram
• Hypertensive Disorders
• Pulmonary Embolism
• Rhythm Disorders
• Rheumatic Heart Disease
• Valvular Heart Disease
• Coronary Artery Disease
• Congenital Heart Disease
• Pediatric Cardiology
• Pericardial Disease
• Myocardial Diseases
• Vascular Diseases
• Cardiac Failure

Course Delivery Format

Taking leaf from Winston Churchill’s philosophy of “always ready to learn although … not always like being taught”, IMA eVarsity is transforming medical education by garnering learning empowered by the interactive platform of digital technology. IMA eVarsity model of blended education integrates best practices of ‘chalk and board’ with emerging technologies, purporting to make mockery of fragmented medical care, that is the bane of the rising costs of health care today!

The IMA eVarsity offers best of the models of blended education through online lectures, with the convenience of self-study at one’s own pace, time and place, complemented by online faculty interactions and clinical exposure through hospital rotations.

A rich learning environment is provided through the SmarTeach Learning Platform with access to:

• Online lectures delivered by experts in respective fields. The students can view the lecture any number of times using tools to conveniently play/pause, forward/rewind, skip/review, bookmark
• Included in these lectures are hundreds of text slides, illustrations and appropriate 2D and 3D animations, audios and videos to make concepts easy to understand
• Reading material including prescribed Text book and e-Books for each chapter; additional reading material would also be suggested through links.
• Facility for the student to bookmark specific segments of a running lecture and ability to add your own notes for later review.
• Weekly self-assessment through multiple choice questions from a question bank of over 1,00,000 questions across all subject areas
• Case based discussions [CbD], where you will be expected to select 2 specific cases during the period of compulsory clinical rotation under the guidance of in-house clinician and ensure completeness of the Logbook for the cases decided.

Assessment

Fellowship  in Primary Care Cardiology follows a set pattern of formative assessments. Following are the types of assessments/examinations that each candidate is subjected to:

• Self Assessments, scheduled online at the end of every lecture and are neither timed nor graded.
• Semester[ Semester – 6 months duration]- Assessments [SA] are also  MCQ Examination at the end of every semester

Month-end and Semester-end assessments are part of formative assessment of theory and constitute 60% of final score on theory, the balance 40% being covered by the final  examination.

Course-end  exam: The final  exam, consists of 40 to 50 MCQs.

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