News Releases

UWI Medical Lecturer launches new book on Primary Health Care

For Release Upon Receipt - March 9, 2010

St. Augustine


 

New primary health care providers should be allowed to learn from the mistakes of those who through trial and, often, error have gone before. That is the philosophy behind a new book from a lecturer in Primary Care at The University of the West Indies (UWI).

“Psychosocial Issues in West Indian Primary Health Care” is the new book written by Dr Rohan Maharaj, UWI Lecturer in Primary Care and Coordinator of the UWI Family Medicine Programme. Dr Maharaj’s book will be launched on Thursday 18th March, 2010 at a ceremony from 7 to 8.30 p.m. at Amphitheatre A, Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope, Trinidad.

Although written primarily for physicians, the book will no doubt be of some use to many ancillary primary health care workers. Dr Maharaj said that he sees the book as a tool for the training of medical students, residents and other primary health care workers in caring for patients.

“In other parts of the world, physicians cannot go into Family or General Practice on completing their basic medical training. Why should our population expect anything less?” he asked.

Since 2000, Dr Maharaj has been a lecturer in Primary Care and the coordinator of the postgraduate programme in Family Medicine at the Faculty of Medical Sciences at UWI Mt Hope in Trinidad and Tobago. It is in this capacity that he has been able to write or coordinate many of the papers contained in the book.

In this book, Dr. Maharaj seeks to share with West Indian primary health care providers his research on depression and psychosocial issues. In this way, Dr Maharaj said, he hopes to improve the care of patients in primary health care, and to set the stage for the next phase of research in this area namely, quality interventions and study of their effectiveness, continuously taking into consideration the fine nuances of our location.  By providing examples of research in primary health care in the West Indies, Dr. Maharaj hopes to challenge and stimulate others to use the information in the publication to develop their own ideas.

 

For more information, please contact Dr Rohan Maharaj at Rohan.Maharaj@sta.uwi.edu.

 

For the latest UWI News, click http://sta.uwi.edu/news.

About UWI

Over the last six decades, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged University with over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest and most longstanding higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, with main campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Centres in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Christopher (St Kitts) & Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent & the Grenadines. UWI recently launched its Open Campus, a virtual campus with over 50 physical site locations across the region, serving over 20 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. Through its seven Faculties, UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Pure & Applied Sciences, Science and Agriculture, and Social Sciences.

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