For South Asian Heritage Month, Professor Pilane Ariyananda FRCP talks about his work empowering Sri Lankan medical students to educate the community.
I am honoured to be invited to share a glimpse of my professional life with fellows and members of our prestigious RCP, as I hope to celebrate 50 years as a practising doctor in 2022. I am the youngest in a family of eight, born in a village in southern Sri Lanka (known then as Ceylon). Having started schooling in a small village school located next to my home, from the third year onwards I was enrolled in a bigger school – Mahinda College Galle – about 5 miles away in the city, to complete both primary and secondary education. Galle is a sleepy town, best known for its Dutch fortress built more than 400 years ago. It is a world heritage site, and the city has been known more recently for being an international test cricket venue.
As a schoolboy, science subjects fascinated me. However, it was our family doctor who drove me towards medicine. His magical touch cured my illnesses every time I saw him and he cared for his patients with profound empathy. He was an ideal role model who inspired me. Almost everyone in my class wanted to become a doctor, but less than a handful of each year’s students were fortunate enough to realise that ambition. I entered the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in 1967 and graduated as a doctor in 1972. After graduation, I worked in Sir Lanka for 40 years, mostly as a senior academic in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ruhuna, a national medical school, before retiring in 2012. Since then, I have been working as a professor in internal medicine in the International Medical University, Malaysia.
I worked in hospitals in Luton and Gateshead, UK from 1978 to 1981 and obtained my MRCP (UK) in 1980. I was attached to the Royal Free Hospital, London as a Commonwealth medical fellow in 1994/95 and the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI), USA as a Fulbright scholar in 2011. I continued as an adjunct professor of the DGHI from from 2011 until 2014.
I was elected as the dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, a national medical school, on 9 February 2005, just 46 days after the Asian tsunami that devastated Sri Lanka. The country lost nearly 40,000 lives, including 10 of our alumni. One seaside student hostel was washed away by the 20-foot tsunami wave, but we were fortunate not to lose any students, as they were on vacation. It was a challenging task to give leadership to a medical school that was mourning and trying to recover from a national disaster. Many of us in the medical school, staff and students alike, were personally affected by the loss of family members, relatives, friends and neighbours. The tsunami had a hugely detrimental effect on our motivation and morale.
One of the strategies that our medical school adopted on its rocky road to recovery was to reach out to the community. As 2006 was our silver jubilee year, it was decided to celebrate it by holding a medical exhibition, under the theme ‘knowledge for healthy living’, from 13 to 22 January. This was a landmark event – the first ever medical exhibition to be held in southern Sri Lanka. It gave the opportunity for the Sri Lankan public to learn about human biology and structural and functional changes that are seen as a response to disease. There were more than 180,000 visitors, including 75,000 school children, who were full of praise and considered it a worthy educational experience, which prompted us to consider displaying medical knowledge to the public on a permanent basis. This was realised by establishing a permanent Medical Exhibition Centre (MEC) within the medical school premises.
The MEC, which was first of its kind in the country, opened to the public in May 2009. It was the momentum of the medical exhibition and the response of the public that drove us to establish the MEC, with the aim of educating the public on health-related matters. It is specially designed to cater to the General Certificate of Education Ordinary, as well as Advanced Level students in the field of bioscience. The MEC has illustrations of normal human anatomy (structure) and physiology (function) that could be easily understood by the lay public. All exhibits are labelled in Sinhala (one of the national languages) and English, giving some detail to enable greater understanding, and is expected to help students in preparation for their examinations. Exhibits on display include dissected bodies, body parts and organs from actual human beings, and 3D models of cells, its components (organelles), and various organs of the body. Exhibits are laid out an area of about 7,000 square feet in a system-based manner, so that all exhibits that illustrate a particular system of the body are clustered together to enable greater understanding. In different exhibition areas, pre-recorded informative health talks can be played through the public address system, when required. Another special feature of the MEC is its lecture theatre, which is meant for public education regarding common diseases.
The projects I lead on at the MEC nurtured hitherto unseen soft skills, such as excellent teamwork, good communication skills and conflict management skills, fine collaboration and cooperation and capacity to build great bonds among us. For most of us, motivation and empathy towards others played a very important role during these projects and some team members were truly altruistic. We went through years of endurance and went beyond resilience to turn the adversity of the tsunami tide to an opportunity.
