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Ionescu SCTS fellowship: two milestone years Anas Boulemden, FRCSEd (CTh), Senior fellow in cardiothoracic surgery, Nottingham Trent Cardiac Centre
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f you ask me about my passions in life, I will not hesitate to mention cardiothoracic surgery, research and football! Combining and materialising these passions in one day came true during the Birmingham SCTS meeting (March 2016). I recruited a team of doctors, admin staff and other health care professional from Nottingham Trent cardiac centre, and we went on to reach the final and win the SCTS football tournament in Birmingham, and I must say it felt surreal. A few days later, I received an email from Letty Mitchell, and I was informed that my application for the Ionescu SCTS fellowship was successful and I was awarded ÂŁ4000 to facilitate my professional development. It was also the year when I performed my first full CABG case under Mr Richens supervision, a truly inspirational and instrumental trainer, and then my first
independent CABG case under Mr Szafranek, my current mentor who has been genuinely passionate about my training and who supported my application for the SCTS scholarship. It was a culmination of many years of dedicated training and learning opportunities in the east midlands region and in the Trent cardiac centre in particular. Reading and being involved in research has been a passion of mine since my core surgical training days and I aspired to undertake a degree in research. Hence, the natural choice to undertake a part time Master research in applied health studies (DeMontfort University, Leicester). As outlined in the programme handbook, this MRes equips students with a holistic understanding of research, from planning to designing and formulating a research problem within an ethical and professional framework. The programme comprises five modules and a dissertation: Research Designs in Health I learnt about the principles of research design and methods as well as an introduction to research ethics, i.e. how to design a survey. This module has a social element to it, which I found a bit challenging being a surgeon! It was an educational module, which culminated in learning how to write a research proposal as part of an assignment.
Anas Boulemden, Adam Szafranek, Trent Cardiac Centre, Nottingham University hospitals
Research Dilemmas and Strategies This module focuses on research strategies and philosophical assumptions. It also covers social sciences applied to the health field. I learnt more about the pros and cons of randomised controlled
“Reading and being involved in research has been a passion of mine since my core surgical training days and I aspired to undertake a degree in research.� trials, and their weakness regarding external validity and caution about generalisability of the results to the broader population. Health Policy and Strategy This was an interesting and very much relevant module. It was an opportunity to learn more about the NHS structure and policymaking challenges in the contemporary era. Understanding the politics, the fiscal aspect and research in the field of healthcare was a core part of this module. Making Sense of Quantitative and Qualitative Data This module was one of the main reasons I opted for this masters. The module had two main components: qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative part was a bit hard to digest, but there were some learning points there. It was interesting to learn about some ways used in analysing qualitative data, namely thematic analysis, which would be useful in conducting surveys (open questions
