Tag Archives: research

Elsewhere in the Palliverse – Weekend Reads

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photo by David Mao itsdavo

I hope you enjoy this selection of articles (and some links to photos and videos) about palliative care, research and related topics. If you make it to the bottom, I’m interested to know what you think of the last link. Please share your thoughts, and any recommendations, in the comments section.

  • “Why is so difficult to prognositicate?” asks neurologist Jules Montague, examining cases of poor prognostication throughout history. (Why doctors get it wrong, The Guardian UK)
  • Team Palliverse still have a place in our heart for textbooks, and we love it even more when their editors write blog posts. To mark the release of the fifth edition of the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine, the OUP blog is publishing a 3-part series titled “Facing the challenges of palliative care”. Part 1 (Continuity) and Part 2 (Development) are available now. (Oxford University Press)

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Elsewhere in the Palliverse – Weekend Reads

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I have so many links to share with you. Here are a few of them:

Australian critical care doctor and blogger Andy W writes about death and taxes and asks, “…why is it that we seem to spend so much time talking about the taxes, and not nearly enough about death?” Thought-provoking stuff. “The Things That Are Certain“, The Flying PhD

“Death isn’t failure. But avoiding these conversations is.” UK Palliative Care Physician Katherine Sleeman shares her story in this beautiful piece, “While medicine gets better, dying gets worse: Doctors are so good at saving lives that we forget about death.” (The Independent UK) Continue reading →

What don’t we need to do in palliative care research?

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I’ve heard the question of what should we be doing in future research many times. But are there things we should not be doing in palliative care research? I’ve only heard this question asked once in a formal conference setting, and it elicited mostly stunned silence, followed by varying levels of opposition and attempts to reframe the question.

Why is this? Continue reading →

Palliverse researchers database update

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(Image: University of Michigan Library Card Catalog by dfulmer / CC BY)

The latest update of the Palliverse researchers database is here! Our numbers continue to grow and we will be talking about (and hopefully recruiting for) the database as a poster presentation at the upcoming Asia Pacific Hospice Conference in Taipei, Taiwan. Come and say hello in person if you will also be attending!

Once again, if you’ve have any stories associated with the database, we’d love to know! Email us at Palliverse@gmail.com

Happy Easter everyone!

Elsewhere in the Palliverse – weekend reads

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weekendreads

I’d recommend the current issues of New Philospher (#7: Health) and Quarterly Essay (#57: Dear Life) for some palliative care-related reading. If you can’t make it to the book shop here are some online reads:

Truly beautiful words – Before I Go: A Stanford neurosurgeon’s parting wisdom about life and time. (The Washington Post)

EAPC has a new blog series from the patient and carer perspective! (Palliative Stories, EAPC Blog)

The Trouble With Advance Directives. (NY Times)

A doctor discovers an important question patients should be asked. (Washington Post)

When doing everything is way too much. (NY Times) Continue reading →

Reflections on research – supervision and deadlines

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Flinders street

Like @Elissa_Campbell, five weeks ago, rather than starting a new clinical rotation at the beginning of the medical year, I too embarked on a research fellowship. For the next twelve months, instead of trying to fit in training requirements and research projects around clinical duties, I have the luxury of being able to devote pretty much all of my time to thinking and learning about research, reading studies properly instead of quickly scanning through papers, and talking to other researchers and clinicians – who are almost always encouraging, interested and incredibly generous with their time and advice.

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Elissa in Wonderland – Reflections on Research

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I feel like I’ve learnt more in the past 3 weeks in my research fellowship than I did in the preceding year of clinical work. It’s a steep learning curve, and one that’s taken me out of my comfort zone.

Doctors are generally very comfortable in their role as clinician, and far less so in other roles, such as manager or researcher. Our training prepares us to be experts in clinical management and even if we don’t know the answer, we know where to go look for it. The positive feedback in clinical work can be rapid (provide an intervention, see an improvement for the patient, repeat, hurrah!), unlike management or research roles. Continue reading →

8 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting My First Research Project

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This is advice I give to people starting out in advanced training in palliative medicine (or geriatric medicine, my other training specialty) when asked about research projects*. It may also be relevant to other clinicians wanting to start out in research. The advice is based on my own experience and from talking to other trainees. One-hundred hours into your project, you do not want to discover that your study design is flawed or your results invalid. This advice may help to prevent that.

  1. Your research supervisor does not need to be the same person as your clinical supervisor. Unless your clinical supervisor is also a researcher, I would advise looking for someone else to supervise you, who has a research background. They do not need to come from your specialty or profession (although obviously some familiarity with your broad research topic is important). They may be based in a different city or country (although it may create complications with ethics approvals if your supervisor is from different institution).

Your supervisor can guide you through your study design. This improves the likelihood of producing valid results, which you can then publish and add to palliative care knowledge for the benefit of palliative care patients (because this is why we’re doing this research thing, right?)

If you’re not sure where to start looking for a supervisor, ask an academic in your field if they can recommend anyone. If you want to do palliative care research, the Palliverse researcher database is a good place to start.

  1. Librarians are very helpful. Most hospitals or health services have librarians who can assist you to use search engines, citation managers and other programs more efficiently. The library probably has resources that you don’t even know about.

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Reflections on research – a week of firsts

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This is the first in a regular series of posts by Palliverse team members about their day-to-day experiences in research roles.

This week was a week of firsts for me. For the first time as a doctor, I am in a role that is primarily non-clinical. On Monday, I commenced a 1-year research fellowship based in theDepartment of Palliative Care at Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. It is also the first time I will be in the same position for a whole year (training terms for junior doctors generally ranging from 10 weeks to 6 months duration in WA). It’s the first job I’ve had where it’s my responsibility to set my own schedule, without the routine of ward rounds, clinics, home visits and consult referrals. It’s my first time working at this hospital – in fact, Monday was the first day at this hospital for most of our team. It is a brand new facility. The Emergency Department saw its first ever patient on Tuesday. More patients will be transferred from another hospital over the weekend. Our palliative care team (doctors, nurses and social worker) have come together from various services, care settings and states. It’s a great opportunity for us to learn from each other and so far it’s functioning very well. There is a fantastic energy at this new hospital – all the staff I’ve encountered are enthusiastic about change (for the better) and it is a great opportunity to get things done without the burden of “that’s how we’ve always done it” thinking. Continue reading →

A Tour of the Teams: ImPaCCT

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Happy New(ish) Year everyone!

To celebrate we are starting a new segment.  It goes without saying that many people and groups around our region are doing wonderful and exciting work in palliative care research but it can feel a little lonely out there for many of us.  Finding support to develop your idea, and others with a similar interest can be a challenge.  In addition to the palliverse researcher database we thought another way for us all to feel connected was to start to get to know the more established players.  So let’s start with some introductions.  We have been contacting the various academic and research institutions working in palliative research in our region asking them to tell us a little bit about themselves.  “Tour of the teams” will be an ongoing series to bring the responses from these units together.

Unfortunately an actual "tour" was voted as impractical

An actual “tour” was unfortunately deemed impractical

We hope that the “Tour” will help us all be a little more connected and maybe to give us all some ideas of where we can get help to develop that great research idea that we have been sitting on.

The service who gets the gold star for being first off the mark is the ImPaCCT group

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