Читать книгу How to Succeed in Medical Research - Robert Foley Andrew - Страница 18

During some dedicated research time, I had the opportunity to lead a nationwide study throughout Ireland that sought to collect information on men undergoing prostate biopsy and to create an Irish prostate cancer risk assessment tool. Under the guidance of my MSc supervisor, I met with each of the department leads in urology at all eight tertiary urology centres operating under the National Cancer Control Programme in Ireland. I presented a research proposal to the heads of department, seeking to recruit patients for the study from each centre. I then completed the ethical review board applications for each hospital and recruited members to assist with the data collection. The number of patients recruited to this study was more than 4000. My role also included working on the statistical analysis of the data and enlisting the help of the biostatistics department at my university. The next step was the dissemination of the research findings and presentations at local, national, and international meetings. The project has led to a number of publications, and the research project has continued with patient recruitment and the development of more refined risk models, an ongoing interest in my research team.

As you can see, the creation of a collaborative project gives the opportunity to engage in a multi‐institutional project with a large number of clinical and research teams, to prepare and present research proposals, to complete ethical review board applications, to collect large numbers of data, to analyse and interpret the results with the appropriate statistical methodology, and to disseminate the findings. Although it may seem like a daunting task, it is incredibly rewarding, and throughout the sections in this text, we will discuss each of these stages and how to do it for yourself.

Collaboratives don't need to be big, formal organisations with national or international interests, as previously described. And, while large collaboratives are a great way to get started in research, or indeed, get your name on a publication, the topic of research chosen by collaborative leads may not be of particular interest to you, and being listed along with a very long list of co‐authors may not appeal to you.

Therefore, it may be best to form what we term a ‘pseudo‐collaborative’. This is a small group of individuals who may share the same interest in a topic as you but are at other geographical locales and have different key skills and knowledge to bring to a research project.