Clinical Research Oriented Workshop (CROW) Meeting: March 7, 2013

Present: Amanda Kennedy, Charlie MacLean, Connie van Eeghen

1.                  Start Up:   Civilization starts with a tea pot; see Alan Rubin for proof of this.

2.                  Presentation: Connie van Eeghen – Poster Presentation on Opiate Rx QI

a.       Connie shared her first draft of a poster presentation planned for the annual conference of the Society of General Internal Medicine (end of April in Denver).  Although the number of workshop participants was low this week, this had no effect on the number of suggestions made to improve the poster, which were so substantial it is almost impossible to capture them all.  Some of the more significant changes:

                                                  i.      Include references in small print in a corner of the poster.  This material draws from several other researchers, some of whom will be attending the conference.

                                                ii.      Add more data to the background.

                                              iii.      Use the headers as the thread on which the future article will be based – lead the reader through the study.

                                              iv.      Integrate all text into the poster as text; don’t try to make some of it behave like an illustration.

                                                v.      Replace reports of the results with tables/charts.

                                              vi.      Switch to 3 columns (from 4) to give wide diagrams the space they need.

                                            vii.      Link like items together: number the best practices and reference the numbers in the table and diagram.

                                          viii.      A table that shows what each practice did and didn’t accomplish (traffic light indicators of red/yellow/green) is more compelling that a simple bar chart that shows only which best practices were used most.

                                              ix.      Include the funding source.  And include the final poster in an appendix to the final report for the funding source (VDH).

3.                  Presentation: Charlie MacLean – Poster Presentation on Pharmacoepidemiology

a.       Charlie was invited to participate in a FAHC quality improvement symposium, and asked at the last minute to provide a poster.  The poster provides the rationale for why pharmacoepi-studies are valuable and illustrates with two examples.  Suggestions made included eliminating a general illustration on the conceptual relevance of pharmacoepi and exchanging report samples for report results. 

4.                  Plans for VHCURES Project

a.       Next week we will start developing our VHCURES project, with the general goal of studying:

                                                  i.      Opiate naïve patients

                                                ii.      Natural history of opiate use

                                              iii.      Progression of drug use

                                              iv.      Progression of provider involvement (and order of involvement)

                                                v.      ED utilization

b.      Our goal for next week is to develop a research question.  Additional steps after that include:

                                                  i.      IRB approval

                                                ii.      Data clean-up for individual providers records (Charlie)

                                              iii.      Plan to triangulate data in PRISM or IRIS (validation paper)

1.      VHCURES: the FAHC doctors and practices; the drugs that were paid for

2.      PRISM: the drugs that were ordered

3.      VHCURES: the unseen prescribers and drugs; time from ordering to fulfillment

c.       Charlie will lead the workshop next week.

5.                  Next Workshop Meeting(s): Thursday, 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m., at Given Courtyard South Level 4. 

a.       Mar 14: Charlie: Development of VCHURES Research Question (everyone will be here!)

b.      Mar 21: Kairn: F31

c.       Future agenda to consider:

                                                  i.      Christina Cruz, 3^rd year FM resident with questionnaire for mild serotonin withdrawal syndrome?

                                                ii.      Peter Callas or other faculty on multi-level modeling

                                              iii.      Charlie MacLean: demonstration of Tableau

                                              iv.      Journal article: Gomes, 2013, Opioid Dose and MVA in Canada (Charlie)

Recorder: Connie van Eeghen