Initial Intake Face Sheet Form: Fill & Download for Free

I remember the date, it was October 14, 2012. I was visiting my friend who was recovering from a knee injury resulting from a fall from missing a step of 6-inch height. Forced to bed in a plaster-cast, he had just the television screen for entertainment; and we were watching the event unfold.Felix Baumgartner jumped from 36 kilometers up in the space, initially fell like a rock, then soft landed with an inflated parachute, and walked away with a blood-shot eyes and a smile on his face; the fastest super-sonic free-fall ‘record’ in the history of mankind, in his pocket.Feat such as these, prove once again that human body can be as fragile as my friends or as sturdy as one creating headlines.Human body is indeed tremendous structure. The heart for example starts beating at few weeks of intrauterine life when we are just a shapeless mass of cells, till the day we die. It normally pumps out 5 liters of blood in a minute, the amount tripling to 15 liters at the time of pregnancy. The kidneys filter a mammoth 120 liters of urine a day, yes 120 liters, of which 116 being reabsorbed by the kidney tubules, to make sure no important element is lost and we are not stuck in the restrooms most of our lifetime. The liver can grow to its original size even if 75 % of it is cut out. At the same time human body is delicate. A blood clot barely a mm thick can create a stroke or an heart attack. A change of blood pH by 0.2 can make a man breathless, a drop inserum sodium of 5 meq/l can make him drowsy and nonsense.When the first land creatures migrated to the land, may be land way cheaper then, they brought with them a small amount of sea water as a memento, the blood. If we take out the formed cellular elemnts from the human blood, the red and the white blood cells, what is left is ‘plasma’, whose constitution even today is exactly similar to sea water. The main constituent of plasma is sodium and sodium is very important to human bodyThe CaseHe was admitted with drowsiness. For a seventy year old, it looked like a case of cerebral stroke. He was unable to move, obey or understand commands. The Casualty Duty doctor suspected stroke and ordered a CT scan. To his surprise it turned out to be normal and that’s how we got involved. We could not find anything unusual in the history other than mild high blood pressure for which he was prescribed some ‘diuretic’ medicines.We evaluated his every parameter, ECG for signs of heart ailment. EEG to rule out epilepsy, Blood sugar to rule out diabetes. But then we had the call from the lab, the blood sodium level was low only 113 meq/ liters; the (minimum) normal sodium value is above 135 mEq/L.Gandhiji had once said there are 2 white poisons, salt and sugar, and he was absolutely right. Diabetes resulting from excess sugar and high blood pressure because of excess salt intake are the two most common dangerous ailments that give rise to stroke and heart disease, everyone known’s that.Elderly people many often are on salt restricted diet, on pills (like diuretics) that take away sodium from body, tend to develop hyponatremia – low sodium level in blood. A low sodium level can also result from multiple acute and chronic diseases like head trauma, infection, stroke etc where body tends to hold and conserve more water than is necessary by secretion a hormone called ADH. This inappropriate ADH secretion (called SIADH)can cause serious problems even death if not recognized early.It is common knowledge that excess salt kills; create hypertension, stroke or heart attack. But that takes time, couple of decades at the minimum. But a low sodium of a few mEq in blood can transform a space-conquering, sonic-boom shattering, lion-hearted human to a helpless, blabbering, confused soul, bound to a steel bed, draped in green sheets and plastic tethers, blows my mind.Some of you with a stoic mindset might disagree though!

This question asks that we answer with 2-dimensional thinking. This issue will never be solved by 2D thinking. What happens if we look at it with 3D thinking?What do we all want? We want good health. We want it all the time and available to us competently and affordably as intervention is needed, rich and poor alike. Ideally, we will be able to choose a physician relationship based on trust and know that that care provider will not be limited to fifteen minutes twice a year of well-care.When the first clinic opens up near me that I can join for a nominal monthly fee, say $100 a month or maybe even as low as $60… perhaps a family plan for $200 or so a month, I will join. How does that work? In return for that retainer, I would expect to be on a wellness regimen, seeing the doctor as necessary to put me on a track to good health, including nutrition and weight-loss counseling and programs, fitness and exercise too, and mental optimization.Some of these programs I might have to pay extra for, if I choose them, and there might not be a physician involved in those aspects, but certainly someone knowledgeable. If the clinic offered chiropractic and acupuncture as options, that would be a big plus for me because, despite my strong skepticism in both cases, they have proven to have unique value for certain issues. All programs would feed into a file that says whether I am on track and what the best way is to get me there.That is likely to involve nutrition advice or disease-avoidance based on my genetic profile. Should I be overweight or sedentary, perhaps I pay a higher fee for the risk I represent.But what if, God forbid, something terrible happens to me? Do I have to pay out of pocket? No, the clinic would insure all of its patients against calamitous health issues as part of what your fees go for.Does that not sound better, ideal even?I wrote a history of a medical school a decade back. The chief of the surgical department told me a story about taking a group of med students to an Hispanic free clinic where there was a woman with a six-week-old that was not prospering. He put his students to the task of figuring out what was wrong, which involved making a makeshift scale, sniffing soiled diapers, abdominal palpitation and so on.The students swiftly concluded there was no infection; the baby must be on the wrong formula. One of the clinic staff was sent out to her car to fetch the formula—sure enough, she’d been given formula for 12-months-and-up. A change of formula, and the follow-up with her showed the baby doing just fine. Then he added, “Do you know what that workup would have cost in-hospital? At least $2000.”Based on that story, I asked several physicians I interviewed to indulge me in a hypothetical. Physicians, who must always focus like a laser on the here-and-now, hate what-if scenarios. But I got three to go along. “Would it be possible to operate clinics that were not just free but that paid people to come for regular checkups on a break-even basis or even turning a profit?”All three eventually agreed it would be possible… theoretically, but very complicated. As one put it, “Do you realize how many laws you would have to change?”“Do you realize how many laws you would have to change?” traces back to the first government foray into the practice of medicine, the Flexner Report of 1910 and associated congressional hearings. Given that this was the Progressive Era, the thrust was to make certain that medicine remained a profession for Anglo-Saxon Protestant males. It shut down all medical schools not operating on the Prussian Koch school of medicine.* (Osteopathic medicine’s five schools survived the onslaught and became home to women, Jews and Catholics who wished to pursue medicine in the US. That included some blacks, though two all-black medical schools were allowed to survive, with two others shut down, on the thinking that would supply sufficient medical care to black communities.)The hearings also opened the door to the inherently costly “gatekeeper” model of medicine in which patient access to medicines and specialty services comes solely via their primary physician. They also put the American Medical Association firmly in charge, making it the nation’s first large-scale lobbying association (and the origin of most of those laws that need changing).I was out for a run one gorgeous day on the San Francisco Peninsula more than three decades ago when an athletically built red-headed gentleman fell in beside me. The discussion quickly turned to diet, and I laughed him off and told him I had never reduced my intake of butter, bacon, eggs and cream. Rather, I watched my intake of sweeter carbs and eliminated sugar from my diet.He told me I was an idiot asking for a heart attack. “There’s nothing wrong with sugar,” he blurted, “it’s just quick energy.” I thought this awfully presumptuous and asked him how heart attacks were unheard of among cultures that ate lots of animal fats or in Mediterranean diets and what about diabetes?The man started getting red in the face, his voice rising as he announced, “I happen to be a cardiologist. When I say you should watch your fat intake, you should listen.” His hands were now balled up in fists, so I simply veered left and went my own way without another word.For years, on the rare occasions I told that story, listeners would often chime in with him, “He’s right.” Now we all know he was wrong, dead wrong, as in people died because of his willingness to dispense pure ignorance.The Koch school of microbial medicine produced heroic advances, the wonder of the world. It has also produced antibiotic resistant “bugs.” It has caused a lot of other areas of medicine to be ignored to the point that, while a plague of resistant pathogens now stands as a distinct menace, our big problems are no longer medical.Thanks to my wife’s employment, I was privy more than two decades back to a Kaiser Permanente study of profitability by member cohort. It showed that all of medical care was profitable.Guys like me who saw a doctor once a decade were quite profitable (they still didn’t approve of us… our thinking might catch on)Those who came to scheduled check-ups and followed doctors orders were the A students, and profitableThose with cancer, diabetes, lung diseases, heart disease, who followed their regimens… profitableWho wasn’t profitable?Those with sedentary to abusive lifestyles—incipient chronics—who failed to follow doctors’ orders (or, as in the case of my cardiologist running buddy, followed doctors’ ill-informed advice)Wary members, usually immigrants new to the system, who hold off presenting until the condition has become acuteA surprisingly large cohort of hypochondriacs, people who see the doctor multiple unnecessary times each year on flimsy pretextsAll of the cost overruns owed to behavioral problems! Foremost among the staggering cost of American medicine is the fact our present system has no incentive (except for Health Maintenance Organizations like Kaiser) to curb bad behaviors. Most of the government programs being pushed are not for medical care; they are insisting that all of us subsidize bad behavior.A local ENT, or ear, nose and throat doctor, a decade back requested my help with an announcement of being the recipient of a prestigious grant to develop a process that would take a common inner-ear problem from being addressed by referral to a specialist, a $2000 procedure, and allow it to be handled by a nurse practitioner with a quick stop at a clinic for $80.The reason he wanted my help was to craft it in a way that played up the prestigious aspect without giving away any hint that he was about to take an appreciable amount of cash out of the practices of his peers.When I was interviewing lots of physicians, they all, one way and another, were thankful for being in a cutting-edge profession. But then would come a revelation like, “When Tagamet came out, I lost half my gastric surgeries. I had a very tough year.” “When colonoscopy came on the scene, I lost all of my exploratory bowel surgeries. I almost went out of business.” “When the Beta-Blockers came out…” and so on.Those were all boons for us patients, but doctors are not aligned with our best interests. Having to revamp their practices and learn new skills is a hardship.My next younger brother visited more than sixty physicians over a fifteen-year period from his late twenties to his mid forties seeking to find out the source of his ceaseless nerve pain. Several primary-care docs offered to refer him to a psychiatrist. Several more scolded him for seeking pain killers and ordered him out of their offices. Most simply said there was nothing they could do for him.Finally he chanced upon a physician trained in Nigeria who had come here for a medical-research PhD. After reciting his symptoms, the man said, “You are describing the classic symptoms of Lyme disease, but surely, as many physicians as you say you have seen, you’ve been tested for that.”“No, I’ve never even heard of it.”Lyme disease has been a top emphasis of continuing medical education year-after-year for decades, since before he contracted it. The earlier the diagnosis, the more successful the treatment. My brother didn’t get a diagnosis until it was well into secondary stage and his quality of life was quite compromised. More than five dozen American primary-care docs failed my late brother utterly and completely.The winds of change need desperately to blow through the medical profession.The American College of Lifestyle Medicine is the new kid in town. They represent just one of the zephyrs that need to blow. We’ve reached the point, foretold by the Kaiser study mentioned above, where lifestyle issues, correctable by a change in lifestyle, account for some eighty percent of medical costs.But with government involvement and a lobbyist organization devoted to damping the winds of change as much as possible, those helpful breezes cannot blow. When I view proposals like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, with my entrepreneurial mindset I see one thing only—a last-ditch effort to lock in the practice of medicine in this country in its present sorry state, an effort to keep subsidizing lower-quality care at unaffordable prices.What is necessary is a system that aligns costs and interests. A system thatputs the cost for poor lifestyle choices on those responsible, forcing changereduces the tremendous overhead of insurance-driven paymentsincentivizes physicians to innovate in the best interest of patientsdemands care providers stay up-to-date on the broad scope of health issues, not just medical onesrequires physicians to tackle rather than boot problem caseshave physicians pay for the insurance so that better patient outcomes produce lower operating costsis flexible in dealing with medical innovation and staying up on accurate informationprovides low-cost ways of profitably initiating lifestyle improvementsIf you look at the system I outlined at the outset, you will see that it has the potential to achieve all of these desirable realignments significantly reducing costs all around, substantially broadening the provision of care and making sure that our care providers have a financial stake in providing truly cutting-edge care to us so that we stay healthy and their balance sheet does too.* Well before the Flexner report, Sam Hahneman, the founder of homeopathic medicine, took to referring to the form of medicine that survived the Flexner shakeout as “allopathic” medicine, meaning “other than the problem.” It was an indictment of the tendency of western medicine to engage (expensively) in symptom management rather than address underlying issues, keeping illness a “cash cow.” The name stuck.

“Good” is a relative and a subjective term. The goodness of DTU can’t be described on an objective scale. It can only be compared to the other engineering colleges in India. Moreover, it will differ for different branches and for different criteria.Having spent seven semesters here (at the time of writing), I’ll try and bring out a realistic picture of the college based on my experience.Brand Name - We live in a nation obsessed with brand names and stature and it forms an important part of any college’s identity for it opens a lot of doors. From what I have witnessed, although the “DTU” brand is respected by those who know about it, it doesn’t have a ubiquitous existence.It is relatively well-known in Delhi NCR, Punjab, Haryana and parts of UP. The people who have prepared for the engineering entrances know about it. Companies where the alumni are working and which come to recruit are aware of it. Some of the old folks might register it if you say that it used to be DCE. But beyond that, it is not very well-recognised (in comparison to IITs, NITs and BITS).Facilities and Infrastructure - The facilities can be very aptly described as contrasting. The campus is extremely beautiful with a lot of greenery all-around. The library is rich in the collection of books and journals. The classrooms are comfortable. There is a sports complex with decent facilities. The campus has witnessed a gradual improvement in the internet connectivity facility but a lot needs to be done still. For the specifics you can read ~ Yogesh Sah's answer to How good is Delhi Technological University?On the other hand, some of the hostel buildings are in a deplorable condition with damping seepages, falling plasters and broken windows. The mess food is edible, but that’s it. The campus although has a couple of subsidised eating joints, there is not much variety in the menu. It is actually strange that despite being located in Delhi, you don’t get butter chicken anywhere on campus!The administrative procedures are what you’ll find at any typical government office - slow and full of bureaucracy. Moreover, the increased intake is putting a lot of pressure on the limited resources and I don’t see the situation improving unless the campus expands.Quality of Education - This is where I feel that DTU lacks significantly. The syllabus and pedagogy are outdated. The examinations here don’t require you to think and apply the concepts, it is just about memorising whatever the teacher has taught in the class and vomitting the same in the answer sheets. Most of the teachers are not interested in teaching and as a result the attendance criteria is usually relaxed.That being said, there are some good teachers as well who go out of their way to help and support the students in terms of guiding them in writing research papers, securing internships and in general being a great mentor.Being the kind of optimist that I am, I have felt that this has actually helped me and the other students. The best learning happens when you’re on your own. In today’s world, classroom teaching is the last thing needed to learn. Since the academic rigor is comparatively less, it leaves the students with a lot of time to undertake online courses, do projects, participate in hackathons/competitive coding competitions, build stuff, prepare for competitive exams and explore other interests. If you’re someone who is genuinely interested in learning and want to build a strong knowledge base for pursuing research, you’ll have to take initiatives on your. The classroom learning experience won’t be as good.Peer Group - The two reasons that contribute the most to DTU being considered as one of the best engineering colleges in India are its location and the students. You’ll have a very good peer group here which’ll help you grow in a lot of ways. Because of the Delhi quota and the reservations, you’ll find people with ranks in the top thousand as well as with ranks in excess of a lakh. That might be a cause of concern for the top rankers specially, but the major chunk of the population lies in the 10k to 30k bracket. My general observation about the students here is that while they might not be intelligent prodigies or exceptionally hard working, they are extremely resourceful, career oriented, result oriented and do reasonably well for themselves.The huge diversity in the ranks brings a lot of personalities together. It has helped me understand that there is more to life than academics and enabled me to gain a variety of essential life and soft-skills.College Life - DTU offers a very vivid and cherishable college life. It boasts of a lot of active societies, student teams and extracurricular clubs which present ample avenues for pursuing one’s interests. The cultural council does a great work in organising cultural events throughout the year. The various kinds of college fests (Engifest, Aahvaan) have previously witnessed performances by Vishal-Shekhar, Sunidhi Chauhan, Nucleya, The Local Train, Mohit Chauhan etc. Being located in Delhi has its inherent advantages as well. There are a lot of places to hang out and make memories with your friends.Placements and Other Future Prospects - This is where DTU stakes its claim of being one of the better engineering colleges in India. If you are from one of the computer related branches or circuit branches, you’ll have ample opportunities of getting placed in the company of your choice. The situation is not the same for branches like environmental engineering or biotech where students do face a little difficulty.Most of the top companies visit the campus (some examples)Tech (Software Development) - Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, Flipkart, Uber, Adobe, Paytm, OYO, Citibank, HSBC, Deutsche BankElectronics - Texas Instruments, QualcommCore (Electrical & Mechanical) - Tata, Reliance, Maruti, Hyundai, DaikinNon-Core (Analytics and Consulting) - McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, EXL, ZS, UHGThere are a few firms which offer international placements as well. If you’re good then you’ll get placed at a decent company.As far as higher education is concerned, each year the students make it to top graduate and MBA programs. We have students going to Ivy League, MIT, UT Austin, University of Michigan, IIMs, XLRI, FMS, ISB. DTU also produces a lot of top rankers in GATE and the civil services. So, one thing is for sure - it is a great place to build a career. Period.******I have tried to cover all the major parameters on which colleges are judged. But the question remains ~How good is Delhi Technological University?That can only be decided by you based on what you want from your college experience, what you wish to do after that and what is important for you. As far as I am concerned, I have had a wonderful experience.Feel free to reach out in case of any queries or clarifications.