GATEWAY TO RESEARCH BOOKLET
COURSE OVERVIEW Research is a detailed stu d y of a su b ject, e special l y in order to discover (new) inf ormation or r each a (new) understanding. - Cambrid ge Dictionar y. Do you know the benefits of doing r esearch and its impact, especially in the med ical f iel d ? The Standing Committee on Resear ch Ex chang e (SCORE) focuses not onl y l ead s a Resear ch Ex chang e Program enabling 3.00 0 + stu d ents to ex pl or e research in an internat ional setting e very year b u t also strives to improve science an d promote Resear ch in Medical Education. We all recogn ize t he e ssential role research plays in ou r l ives, theref or e, we pl an to learn what it takes us t o get in to t his fiel d at some point during our studies, however sel f -teaching in the field of research can be t ou gh work, Bu t with SCORE worry no more! ! Our Gateway to Research Course targe ted med ical students who were will ing t o take their kn owl ed g e and skills to a higher level to encou rage them to take the first step to break throu gh in to t he resear ch f iel d . Through online sessions, this cou r se aims to pr ovid e students a solid foundat ion on research, in trod u ce them to the basic principl es of resear ch, and teach them the various stages of the resear ch pr ocess f rom elite professionals in the f iel d .
GATEWAY TO RESEARCH COURSE IS YOUR BEST CHOICE TO HAVE THE RIGHT ANSWERS FOR THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS AND MORE
What are the types of research projects that are involved in SCORE? What are the most critical outcomes of a research exchange opportunity? What do you mean by the research camp , when and where is it going to be held? Are we allowed as �students� to participate in clinical trials? Where are cross sectional studies located in evidence based medicine pyramid? What are the best websites to get researches from? Why shouldn't we use google to get information? What do you mean by bias? What is an example of a qualitative study in medicine? And what is its purpose? What are the most important types of scientific research methods for students? How do I know the best type of study for my question research? Where and How we can find opportunities to be part of RCTs ? Where we can find websites for authoritative articles?6What is the difference between the author summary and the abstract?
How can we improve our critical appraisal as researchers? What is the importance of doing research that was done before on different races? What do you mean by patient values? Which component of the evidence based medicine is the most important? What do you mean by comparison? What Is the difference between Literature Review and Systematic review? What do you mean by gaps in research papers? What is falsification? Can you clarify the concept of Fabrication? How to avoid plagiarism? What is the difference between the aim and objective? What is the most suitable size for the introduction? Does the impact of reason hold the same meaning of justification Should we do the literature review before writing a proposal? What are the possible causes for the proposal to be rejected?
INFORMATIVE NOTES FROM SESSION 1
Thank you to everyone who joined us today in the first session of GTR course, The SCORE in IFMSA + Academic Quality in SCORE by Tareq Abdal-Jawwad. Your participation enriched the session. We loved your energy! We’d like to share some highlights of the first session. We started the course with a brief summary about SCORE, its presence in the international field and within IFMSA, and some of the activities it organizes. We went through the types of research projects that are within the scope of SCORE’s work. We introduced participants to the concept of Academic Quality in SCORE, discussed its importance and the 9steps approach to it. Last but not least, we played an interactive game that tested the participants general information regarding SCORE, Academic Quality and the other topics covered during the session, it was so much fun! We are very excited for the upcoming session that will tackle the Stages of Research + Searching for studies topic on 12/10, do not miss out! See the full agenda here: link to the course agenda post on FB group
INFORMATIVE NOTES FROM SESSION 2 And here we are our ambitious future researchers in the second session of the GTR Course sailing with Dr. Selim Talaat from the UK in stages of Research & Searching for studies, it was an informative session including many different approaches. We’d like to share some highlights of the second session: We started the session with a brief introduction about what Research means and the basic characteristics that should have. We moved to how we can start our Research by defining our search area, formulating our idea, creating our question and searching using the PICO model joined with practical exercises on it. We also offered the participants the best Research database platforms such as HDAS, PubMed and Cochrane. We had a practical exercise on how to use the PubMed platform to search and how to select the core concepts using the PICO model. We learned how we can achieve the right evaluation process by following basic guidelines while reading papers. We had an idea about the types of Bias we may face while searching and reading papers. Finally, we came through the types of study designs including the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
INFORMATIVE NOTES FROM SESSION 3
We are continuing with the third session of our course! Today's course, How to Read Research Papers, by Dr. Elham Khateeb, focussed on the basic techniques you will need when reading research papers. And what an informative and a rich session it was. Some highlights from the session: 1. We emphasized how mandatory it is to have the needed skills and knowledge to read a research article. 2. We defined what's meant by an academic journal, what they discuss, and how they differ from the other sources of information such as news. 3. We discussed the process of peer-review, and the value it adds to the published articles. 4. We built a step-by-step approach on how to critically read and interpret the different parts of research paper that include: Skimming through the whole article. Determining the purpose of reading the article. The attitude of reading critically. In addition to many other details and tips to help put the students on the right lane and prepare them to excel in the research field.
INFORMATIVE NOTES FROM SESSION 4
Notes from our previous speaker, Dr. Zaben: I started my session with such an exciting question which is “Why should we bother with research?”. I continued talking about Clinical Research mentioning a very important topic that is Clinical Audit, I explained it by saying “ it is a quality improvement measure that can highlight researchable questions and fields”. I got into details of the process of research, explaining how to get your own research question, how to formulate goals and objectives, how to plan and design research, how to generate research results and finally how to interpret results and draw conclusions. I ended my session with an astonishing quotation describing the research journey, “ Unless you try it, you would not know how good you are at it”.
INFORMATIVE NOTES FROM SESSION 5 Dr. Khalid has started his informative session with the history of EBM by the guidance of the father of EBM the Scottish doctor Archibald Cochrane and the interesting story of his research and its results that lead us to the EBM concept. Then he asked the golden question about “What is EvidenceBased Medicine?” continuing with the full definition of EBM. He illustrated the basic three components that enable us to achieve EBM: 1. Publications 2. Patient values and performances 3. Doctor’s judgments and experience He asked if any component is more important than the other, the answer was NO but he illustrated that the weight given to each of these three EBM varies according to the clinical situation, giving a full understood example on this point. The following question was “WHY EBM?” He explained the crucial part of EBM of training doctors all over the world whether they are doing research or just work on treating patients. He moved to one of the most important points to understand the EBM as he described which was the Evidence-Based Pyramid as we should choose the scientifically sound papers with high validity and low risk bias and he described the strength of research types on the pyramid. He clarified what bias in research means and its importance in selecting the most valuable strong papers for our question. He continued with detailing the 5 steps of EBM: 1 Ask, 2 Access, 3 Appraise, 4 Apply, 5 Assess defining each point fully and supporting it with obvious examples. He ended the lecture with an interactive questions section to evaluate our full understanding.
INFORMATIVE NOTES FROM SESSION 6 Our precious speaker was Dr. Tamer El-Nakhal. Notes from Dr. ElNakhal: I started the session with such important advice asking all the participants to read at least one medical article daily to stay upto- date with what is new in Medicine. I talked about main types of data and classified them into quantitative and qualitative data, with subdividing each category into more specific types. I explained “Variables” by differentiating between independent and independent variables, mentioning that independent variables are those that change, while dependent variables are those that are affected by the change. I gave multiple examples to explain the picture well and clarify it in a good mannar. I talked in details about Standard Deviation (SD) and Confidence interval (CI)n and I made a simple schedule comparing between the two concepts. I also came into the “P Value” demonstrating the figures of this value and when it's considered statistically significant and when it is insignificant. I mentioned “Risk Ratio” as well as “Odds Ratio” , when to use them? and what do they mean?. I defined “Survival rate” and “Kaplan meier survival plot” and discussed the significance of them. I made an interesting interactive activity at the end of the session by asking multiple questions including information was mentioned earlier throughout the session. I thanked the participants for their listening, interest and activity. It was such a pleasure to be a tutor in this amazing course.
INFORMATIVE NOTES FROM SESSION 7 The seventh session in our series was about Literature Review & References presented to us by Dr.Rasha Bseiso. Here is a glimpse of what we learnt from the session: 1. We started by defining Literature Review and its types: the Narrative and Systematic review, and pointed out the major differences between each one of them. Then we differentiated Literature Review from Review Articles. 2. Then we discussed the need for literature review and its role in enriching the body of knowledge, and closing the gaps within it, plus making it easier for new and busy researchers to search and extract information from the body of research that has been built. 3. Then we reviewed the basic structure of a literature review paper, and discussed the main parts it's composed of, including: an abstract, an introduction, methodology, results, and discussion, and what exactly comes within each part of them. 4. We tackled the process of conducting a literature review, starting from finding the research idea, to formulating the research question that will answer three questions: what? How? And why?, then searching the literature and databases, to identify the gaps and limitations that exist in the existing literature about a certain topic, finally to the writing process. 5. Finally, we reviewed plagiarism, the referencing, and citation process, and discussed the methods used by researchers to do each one of them. 6. We talked in detail and the doctor showed us Mendeley, and how to use it to manage reference during writing the research paper. 7. We ended the session by asking questions from the students to the doctor.
INFORMATIVE NOTES FROM SESSION 8
Our precious speaker was Dr. Basma Dmairi. Notes from Dr. Dmairi Dr. Basma Dmairi started the session with such powerful words saying “ your proposal must be as strong as your research, because your research paper won't shine in the dark without a very good proposal”. She really grabbed our attention with these words. Then she began talking about the components of a proposal in details. Dr. Dmairi emphasized on how important it is to distinguish between the impact and the aim in our introduction. She mentioned the concept of “problem statement”. Problem statement is not compulsory for every study but it can be required sometimes. For every research we should write either a problem statement or a proposal but not both. One of the most important components is ethical consideration, “A common mistake is that this section gets neglected from students” she said. At the end, Dr. Dmiri opened the door for participants' questions. And she thanked them all for their interest in research and for their questions.
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FEEDBACKS
WE HAD THE PLEASURE OF MEETING AND LISTENING TO GREAT SPEAKERS WITH FASCINATING RESEARCH EXPERIENCES. RAWAN NAWAS AL-AZHAR UNIVERSITY, GAZA THEY KEPT ON SAYING THAT DOING RESEARCH IN YOUR UNDERGRADUATE WILL HELP YOU GAIN EXPERIENCE THAT WILL MAKE YOUR PATH EASIER FOR THE FUTURE BESIDES THE BENEFITS OF NETWORKING AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT OKAAY!I AM CONVINCED. I'LL GIVE IT A SHOT! “BUT I HAVE NEVER DONE ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE? I DON’T EVEN KNOW THE R OF RESEARCH!”. I ATTENDED THIS COURSE WHILE HAVING EXAMS THAT I DIDN'T REGRET. IT PROVIDED ME A STEP BY STEP GUIDE FROM SCRATCH.IT WAS VERY KNOWLEDGEABLE FOR THE BEGINNER “ME” WHO WANTS TO PURSUE HER CAREER IN CLINICAL RESEARCH AND I AM FINALLY READY TO ENTER THIS EXCITING WORLD.
SEWAR ABDULAZIZ ELEJLA AL-AZHAR UNIVERSITY, GAZA THE COURSE WAS WELL-ORGANIZED AND INFORMATIVE, THE SPEAKERS WERE SPECIALIZED ON THEIR TOPICS, THEY ILLUSTRATED THE SUBJECTS AND ANSWERED THE QUESTIONS. THE WHOLE COURSE WAS TIME-WORTHY! THANK YOU ALL
RAWAND QASIM SALHAB AL-QUDS UNIVERSITY
OC MEMBERS
Abdallah Ramadan Supervisor
Tareq AbdalJawwad Head of OC
Shahd Idais
Baraa Alhendawi
Beesan Moreb
Abdalrahman Ajjour
External Affairs Coordinator Promotional Coordinator
DB Coordinator
DB Coordinator
Haroun Neiroukh
External Affairs Coordinator
Ghadeer Zourob DB Coordinator
This was our course at a glance! We wanted to make the access to the research knowledge covered in the course as easy as possible and so much more. We would love you to put the recommendations written to you into consideration; moreover, put in mind that research is your only way to be the future physician you always dreamed for.
Do not hesitate to contact us for any inquiries: Tareq Ziyad AbdalJawwad Head of Organizing Committee tareqziyad2001@gmail.com