Читать книгу How to Succeed in Medical Research - Robert Foley Andrew - Страница 25

I had the idea for a research study in patients with acoustic neuroma (a brain tumour) because a family member of mine was diagnosed with the condition. I obviously had a big interest in this disease, and I was particularly interested if patients with this tumour experienced a big impact on their quality of life. I discussed the idea with a colleague of mine, and this project was also perfect for him, as it allowed him to demonstrate his interest in ear, nose, and throat surgery, because that is who commonly looks after patients with acoustic neuroma. But we didn't know much about quality of life in research, so we asked for help from our hospital's psychiatric team, particularly concerning how to perform a quality of life assessment, and they gave us ideas of questionnaires we could use. From there, we spent some time reviewing the literature on the topic. We found that some research had been conducted on the topic, but that we could approach it from a different angle. We were interested in whether the quality of life was different in patients who had undergone a different treatment strategy, and if alcohol was used as a coping mechanism. We thought that our question was clinically interesting, and we decided that we would proceed to the next step in this study and try to identify a supervisor for the project.