Medical College & Mentoring Staff

What Medical Colleges & Mentoring Institutions Do in DigitVA

In public health verbal autopsy programmes, Medical Colleges and Mentoring Institutions play a vital academic and clinical role. Rather than having field workers or non-medical personnel determine causes of death, DigitVA connects district health teams with faculty members, assistant professors, and resident doctors from medical colleges.

Mentoring faculty and resident doctors lend their clinical expertise to assess the illness narratives and symptom patterns collected by field interviewers, assigning authoritative WHO ICD-10 or ICD-11 causes of death and performing independent quality reviews.

Dedicated Mentoring Portal: Medical college staff have access to a dedicated Mentoring Institution screen (/app/mentoring), where they can see their institution's supported districts, view assigned roles, and immediately jump into coding or review queues.

The 4 Roles of a Medical College Mentor

A medical college doctor can hold any combination of four specialized roles within the districts their college is linked to:

Role Health System Function What the Doctor Does
Coder Primary Cause-of-Death Determination Reads the family narrative, medical records, and symptom answers collected during the verbal autopsy, and assigns the underlying cause of death using the WHO ICD coding tool.
Reviewer Independent Quality Assurance (QA) Independently reviews a sample of completed cases after the coder's 24-hour correction window closes. The reviewer evaluates the case without seeing the first coder's decision, ensuring unbiased clinical scrutiny.
Coding Tester System & Protocol Verification Tests new questionnaires, coding rules, and forms before live data collection begins. Their coding does not alter official district mortality statistics.
Viewer with Names Epidemiological & Academic Review Allows senior professors and departmental heads to review mortality trends, case narratives, and progress figures across supported districts for academic research and health system feedback.

Why Mentors Sit Alongside (Not Inside) District Staff Headcounts

Medical college mentors are academic partners, not regular employees of the district health department. DigitVA lists college mentors in a dedicated mentoring roster alongside district staff. This ensures that:

  • District administrative rosters, sanctioned posts, and official health worker counts remain strictly accurate.
  • Colleges can support multiple districts simultaneously without administrative confusion.
  • When resident doctors complete their rotation or leave the college, the institution admin can update the college roster without altering district establishment records.

How Mentoring Accounts & Area Roles are Managed

Setting up medical college mentoring is a simple two-step partnership between the college and the district:

  1. College / Institute Admin manages the roster: The nodal officer or institute admin for the medical college logs in and opens the Mentoring Institution screen (/app/mentoring). Here, they add faculty members and resident doctors by name, email, and department, or remove doctors whose rotations have ended. (The college admin manages user accounts for their college, but does not grant district roles.)
  2. District Programme Manager or Project Lead assigns roles: Once a doctor is added to the college roster, the District Programme Manager (DPM), Chief Medical Officer (CMO), or Project Lead assigns their specific role (e.g. Coder or Reviewer) with a Within Area scope (for example, Within Area: District Rohtak or Within Area: Ballabgarh CHC).
"Within Area" Scope: When a mentor is assigned to a district or block, their worklist contains only deaths belonging to that specific health area. Cases from other districts are not shown.

Step-by-Step Guide for a New Mentor

If you are a medical college professor, assistant professor, or resident doctor new to DigitVA, follow these simple steps:

  1. Verify your account: Check your email for an invitation from DigitVA. Click the verification link to confirm your email and set your password.
  2. Log in: Go to the DigitVA login page and sign in with your verified email and password.
  3. View your assignments: On your home screen or the Mentoring Institution screen (/app/mentoring), check the list of supported districts and your assigned roles (e.g., Coder for District Rohtak).
  4. Open your queue:
    • If you are a Coder, click Start coding or open the Coding Queue to pick an eligible case from your assigned area.
    • If you are a Reviewer, click Review cases to access cases ready for quality review.
  5. Evaluate and code: Read the family's narrative and reported symptoms. Look up the appropriate condition using the fast ICD search tool or the DORIS decision assistant, confirm the underlying cause, and submit.
  6. 24-Hour Correction: If you realize you need to adjust your coded cause of death, you can reopen and correct your finalized case at any time within 24 hours of submission.

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