How to get involved in clinical audit and research for medical students

1. @starsurgUK | www.starsurg.org
How to get involved
in research and audit
Dr Ed Fitzgerald
@DrEdFitzgerald

2. So what’s it all about?

3. Why bother?
Why get involved in
research (and audit)?

4. Why bother?
Simple answer:
Because the GMC say you should!
• “Doctor as a scholar and a scientist”.
• Ability to formulate research Q’s
• Critically appraise studies

5. GMC “Tomorrow’s Doctors”
Apply scientific method and approaches to medical research:
(a) Critically appraise the results of relevant diagnostic, prognostic and treatment trials
and other qualitative and quantitative studies as reported in the medical and
scientific literature.
(b) Formulate simple relevant research questions in biomedical science, psychosocial
science or population science, and design appropriate studies or experiments to
address the questions.
(c) Apply findings from the literature to answer questions raised by specific clinical
problems.
(d) Understand the ethical and governance issues involved in medical research.

6. Real reasons?!
• Points win prizes vs. Wanting to make a difference

7. Who, How, and Why?
• Is student research important? – Yes
• Your future practice = Evidence-based medicine
• Heparin
• Insulin
• Islets of Langerhans
• Sino-Atrial Node
• Is participation easy? – Not currently
• Many obstacles exist
• And therein lies the problem…

8. Wider benefits for faculty

9. Are other factors involved?

10. What does it look like?

12. Barriers to student participation
• 38% had been involved in extracurricular research
• 86% felt that research experience was useful for
medical students
• 33% agreed that they had been frustrated by lack of
research opportunities
• 50% felt they had not been asking the right people
• 63% believed a lack of interest from potential supervisors

13. Barriers to student participation
Success!
Time
Culture
Hierarchy
Project
Question Resources
InertiaEngagement
Mentoring
Peers
Research
support
structures

14. Others are succeeding!

15. What do we do?

16. What to do?
• No right time to start: “Start before you are ready”
• Collaborate: find partners to work with
• Be realistic and keep pushing
• Ask around
• Who has got projects?
• Who is a good supervisor? (and what does that mean…)
• Clarity
• What will you be doing?
• What support will you have?
• What will you get out of it?

17. Have a plan!
(Or find someone
else who does!)

18. Audit – What to do (and how)?

19. “Research” - What to do (and how)?
Easy but least likely
Difficult but most likely
Tricky one
Trickiest!

20. Differences
Audit Research
Never experimental and does not
involve any change in routine patient
care
Typically tests and compares
interventions experimentally
May generate hypotheses which can
only be reliably tested with research
Sets out to prove or disprove
hypotheses
Will never involve a completely new
treatment
May involve a completely new treatment
Patients are never randomised into
treatment arms
Patients may be randomised into
different treatment arms
Does not require ethics approval but
needs to be registered
Always requires ethics approval
Usually not generalisable May be generalised to wider population

21. End results?

22. Dealing with rejection …
• Don’t give up!
• It’s not personal
• Probably a good reason
• See what you can learn from it
• If you haven’t already, get someone knowledgeable to
review
• Like any other sport, you get better at it the more you
practice
• So just suck it up, learn from it, and try again!

24. What can medical schools do?
• Foster a positive culture for medical student
academia
- Mentor
- Reward
- Train
• Provide practical, logistical support for this
- List available studies
- Arrange/facilitate student meetings
- Dedicated journal clubs

25. Any questions?

26. www.STARSurg.org