This is a summary of the entire work that we have carried out during the past decade in the area of Ayurveda Education.

1. Educational
Research in
Ayurveda:
Our Experiences
Kishor Patwardhan
Department of Kriya Sharir
Faculty of Ayurveda, IMS, BHU

2. Educational research
 Systematic collection and analysis of data related to the
field of education. It often involves the following aspects:
 Student learning
 Teaching methods
 Teacher training
 Classroom dynamics
 Assessment and Examination

3. Status of Ayurveda Education in India
 At present there are 318 Ayurveda colleges that run UG
programs
 190 colleges run PG programs
 Out of these, more than 220 colleges were established in
the past 30 to 35 years
 Mushrooming still continues because this sector is
treated as a good business avenue

4. Commonly perceived challenges
 Quantity vs. quality of education
 Poor infrastructure and poor clinical exposure
 More of text-based teaching and less practical training
 Redundant methods of teaching-learning
 Redundant methods of examination and assessment
 Poor exposure to good research and publication
 Academic Dishonesty

5. Where is the evidence?
 Nation-wide survey (2005 to 2008)
 Population: All Interns, PG Students and Teachers
 Random Cluster Sampling method
 All colleges in one zone (N,E,S,W) were considered as one
cluster
 A list of 242 Ayurveda colleges was taken as the sample frame
 At least 10% of Colleges from each geographical zone covering
the maximum number of states (32 Colleges)
 A total of 1022 participants from 18 states responded to the
questionnaire.

6. Domains investigated
 Exposure to basic clinical skills
 Job opportunities
 Relevance of the Curriculum
 Teaching methods
 Global Challenges
 Entrepreneurship opportunities
 Perception regarding an ideal model of Medical Education for
India.
 Personal relevance of Ayurveda

7. The questionnaire: validation
 The preliminary questionnaire was distributed to 150
respondents
 Each section (related to one domain) was considered as an
independent scale and these scales were tested for their
reliability using ‘Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha’.
 While validating the scales value of alpha greater than 0.7
and item-total correlation greater than 0.2 were considered
to be acceptable.

8. Results: Clinical Skills
 Not trained to handle clinical emergencies of primary
healthcare level through Ayurvedic methods
 Inadequate clinical exposure to basic procedures like
incision and drainage, suturing and catheterization
 Most of the times they cannot conduct normal delivery
 No exposure to a variety of cases

9. Results: Clinical Skills
 Inadequate exposure to modern diagnostic tools
 Not trained in areas like genetic counseling, sexual
medicine, care of terminally ill patients, geriatrics, and
drug and alcohol abuse
 Not trained well in procedures such as “Panchakarma”
“Kshara Sutra” etc.
 Poor basic skills of physical examination, diagnosis and
management of common clinical conditions.

11. Curriculum not in tune with Global Challenges
 Laws governing the intellectual property rights
 Basic procedures of standardization of medicinal products
 Fundamental methods of evaluating the toxicity of the
medicinal products
 Essentials of healthcare management
 Basics of cultivation and marketing of medicinal plants
 Training in standard methods of research and communication

13. Curriculum and Teaching Methods
 Textbook-based teaching, mostly memory-based
 Application aspect is neglected
 Many outdated topics are still there
 Too much of subjectivity in understanding / teaching the
subject
 Examinations are memory-based and are not analysis-oriented

15. Major Areas Chosen
 Generating the teaching Resources
 Teaching-Learning Methods
 Developing standard clinical assessment tools
 Publication standards
 Examination and Assessment
 Policy Issues

16. Major Areas Chosen
 Generating the teaching Resources
 Teaching-Learning Methods
 Developing standard clinical assessment tools
 Publication standards
 Examination and Assessment
 Policy Issues

17. Generating Teaching Resources

21. Circulation
 Errors in understanding
 Food being converted in liver to blood on day-to-day basis
 Porous inter-ventricular septum
 Arteries carried air (pneuma) derived from breath
 Veins carried blood from the heart towards periphery
 William Harvey’s contributions
 Contributions of Ayurveda
 Bhela Samhita, Chakrapani, Charaka, Sushruta,
Sharngadhara, Vagbhata

23. Blood: Rasa? Rakta?

27. Major Areas Chosen
 Generating the teaching Resources
 Teaching-Learning Methods
 Developing standard clinical assessment tools
 Publication standards
 Examination and Assessment
 Policy Issues

28. Teaching-Learning Methods
We evaluated three integrative methods of interventions:
 Integrative module on cardiovascular physiology (IMCP)
 Case-stimulated learning (CSL)
 Classroom small group discussion (CSGD).

30. ‘Integrative methods’
 The instructional methods that help in bridging the gaps
between the two streams of sciences, that is, ‘Ayurveda
physiology’ and ‘contemporary biomedical physiology’
 The instructional methods that help in integrating the
theoretical knowledge with the clinically relevant application
 The instructional methods that help in understanding the links
between different organ systems and Dosha-Dhatu-
Mala highlighting their role in maintaining the homeostasis.

31.  Population
 Students who were registered in the first professional BAMS
program for the academic years 2011-2012 and 2012-2013.
 Sampling and randomization
 Students of both the academic years were randomized and
grouped separately into two equal groups: ‘Experimental’ and
‘control’.
 We used the = RAND() function available with Microsoft Excel
2007 workbook for this purpose.

32. Module on cardiovascular physiology
 First stage: ‘Discrete’ and ‘Integrative’ teaching
 “An introduction to cardiovascular physiology” was the title of
the module that was evaluated in this experiment.
 In this method, the experiment was done to compare the
effectiveness of ‘discrete’ and ‘integrative’ teaching methods.
 We decided to use this term (Discrete) to highlight the position
of ‘detachment’ while viewing the two streams of science. In
this method, Ayurveda and contemporary biomedicine portion
of the topic was delivered without discussing any correlation
or integration.

33. Intervention
 The experimental group was introduced to a new way of
instruction, that is, integrative method.
 In this method, the concepts of Ayurveda and contemporary
medical science were correlated using the ideas derived from
different sources of scholarly literature authored by various
contemporary scholars.
 Duration of each teaching session was 1 hour. In total, both the
groups received instructions for 5 hours each.
 For ethical purposes, cross-over was done so that each student
received instructions by both the methods

34. Evaluation
 The learning outcome was assessed in the form of a short
written test of 1 hour duration conducted after the
completion of the first stage of the experiment.
 Attendance pattern and total human hours spent during
entire period of experiment were also taken into account.
 Feedback on structured questionnaire (Likert scale) was
also taken

36. Case-Stimulated Learning
 This experiment was designed with an aim of achieving
integration between ‘theory’ and ‘application’ along with
achieving ‘Ayurveda-Biomedicine’ integration.
 The students were first introduced to an imaginary clinical
case scenario (IHD). A brief history of the patient,
symptoms, and investigation reports were provided, and
thereafter, the physiology was described in a conventional
manner. At the end of the lecture, the case was taken up
once again and the students were asked to solve the
mystery of the case.

38. Classroom Small Group Discussion
 Students were distributed into multiple groups comprising of about
6 students each. They were then assigned a topic and were provided
with the reference material in the form of textbooks and review
articles.
 “Microcirculation and edema” was selected as the topic for this
experiment. Students were asked to study, understand and discuss
the topic for 1 hour within the group.
 The instructor acted as a facilitator and helped students in studying
and understanding the physiological principles regulating the
microcirculation, while also introducing them to the integrative way
of understanding the concepts of ‘Edema’ and ‘shotha’.

40. Strengths of the study
 The study shows that development of testable integrative
methods of teaching is possible in the context of
Ayurveda education.
 The study shows that bringing the scholarly literature into
the graduate level classrooms is possible with the
meticulously planned interventions.
 The study also shows that integrative approaches make
the topics likable and help in avoiding cognitive
dissonance.

41. Major Areas Chosen
 Generating the teaching Resources
 Teaching-Learning Methods
 Developing standard clinical assessment tools
 Publication standards
 Examination and Assessment
 Policy Issues

43. Development of tool to assess Prakriti
 Based on Charaka Samhita
 Self-assessment type
 Statistically validated to a reasonable extent
 The normalizing algorithm used to convert different traits
into a scores was based on the notion that all traits need
not carry equal weightage and total number of traits
assigned to a particular Parakriti are not equal for Vata-
Pitta-Kapha

45. The tool segregates individuals efficiently

47.  106 healthy volunteers were subjected to various
autonomic function tests such as cold pressor test, standing-
to-lying ratio, Valsalva ratio and pupillary responses
 The results suggest that, the autonomic function tests in the
healthy individuals correlate with Prakriti
 In particular, people with Kapha Prakriti showed a tendency
to have either a higher parasympathetic activity or a lower
sympathetic activity with respect to their cardiovascular
reactivity in comparison to the individuals with Pitta or Vata
Prakriti

51. Major Areas Chosen
 Generating the teaching Resources
 Teaching-Learning Methods
 Developing standard clinical assessment tools
 Publication standards
 Examination and Assessment
 Policy Issues

53.  Analyzed 47 journals that publish Ayurveda
 AYUSH Journals being published in India were found to be
deficient in many ways
 Those indexed with PubMed were better
 Many claimed bogus impact factors and other journal metrics
 Many faked peer review, published plagiarized content
 Quality of published articles was not uniform in standard
 Ethical issues, research violations were common

59. Major Areas Chosen
 Generating the teaching Resources
 Teaching-Learning Methods
 Developing standard clinical assessment tools
 Publication standards
 Examination and Assessment
 Policy Issues

64. Major Areas Chosen
 Generating the teaching Resources
 Teaching-Learning Methods
 Developing standard clinical assessment tools
 Publication standards
 Examination and Assessment
 Policy Issues

65. Major Areas Chosen
 Generating the teaching Resources
 Teaching-Learning Methods
 Developing standard clinical assessment tools
 Publication standards
 Examination and Assessment
 Policy Issues

70. IMPACT

76. IRSA-2014, Germany
 “Certain Autonomic
Responses in Healthy
individuals may have
some Association with
Constitutional types
defined in Ayurveda”
 Dr. Sunil Rapolu

77. Japan Ayurveda School, Tokyo

78. EWAC#@, Koblenz, Germany

79. Our co-authors
HCS Rathore
Sangeeta Gehlot
Girish Singh
Priyanka Jadhav
Supriya Bhalerao
Bhushan Patwardhan
Pratap Thakur
Suresh Kumar
Sunil Rapolu
Girish Tillu
Himanshu Joshi
R Galib
CP Gunawat
Piyush Tripathi
Aparna Singh
Deepti Singh
Sonam Agrawal
Abha SinghManoj Kumar