Clinical Research Oriented Workshop (CROW) Meeting: July 13, 2023

 

Present:   Justine Dee, Nancy Gell, Juvena Hitt, Amanda Kennedy, Jerry Landau, Ben Littenberg, Jen Oshita, Adam Sprouse Blum, Connie van Eeghen (9)

 1.                   Warm Up: Jen’s defense date is Sept 8!

2.                   Jen’s Scoping Review Intro and Methods entitled: “Accommodations Facilitating Effective Communication for Adults with Communication Disabilities in Healthcare”

a.       Title: good

b.       Co-authors: consider library specialists as potential co-authors, as a reminder

c.       Intro

                                                   i.      Check source for US adult pop statistics

                                                 ii.      Is there a standard definition for CDs (communication disabilities)?

                                               iii.      Define “inadequate communication”

                                               iv.      Consider reorganizing the Intro sequence:

1.       Current: Federal regs and standards, then effect on population, then effect on healthcare communication

2.       Consider: reversing this order

                                                 v.      Consider tightening language (examples given in discussion)

                                               vi.      Couch declarative statements in keeping with sources and to support the purpose of a scoping review, which is meant to identify the evidence that exists so far in terms of accommodations that are being studied

                                              vii.      Consider whether to include results of the identified studies, which will help support the eventual Discussion section. Is a table that reports each source essential?

1.       The purpose of this study is for health care orgs to know what accommodations have been studied and for which populations, and to show the need for more rigorous studies.

2.       Overall, a few studies were RCTs, one of which was very strong.  “Here is the literature, with 3 RCTs and 38 weak studies.”  Look at the 3 strong studies in depth as a review of what we know so far. Discussion: “Do fewer lousy studies and more RCTs!”  And add solutions for how to do better studies, such as combining efforts across institutions and networks.

d.       Methods

                                                   i.      Summarize the key search terms

                                                 ii.      Covidence 2023 is a platform that accepts Endnote citations and assigns literature sources are distributed equally, tracks reviews, eliminates duplicates, flags discrepancies between reviewers, allows extractions – has data management features that are handy; available at UVM

                                               iii.      Save results for Results!

3.                   Schedule for rest of the month:

a.       July 20 - TBD

 

Recorded by: CvE

Clinical Research Oriented Workshop (CROW) Meeting: June 22, 2023

Present:   Katie Grenon, Emily Houston, Jerry Landau, Ben Littenberg, Liliane Savard,  Connie van Eeghen, Liz Winterbauer (7)

 1.                   Warm Up:

2.                   Emily’s 3 posters: presenting at the World Parkinson Congress; would like feedback on first impressions, layout, and recommendations for improvements. Emily used Biorender to develop these posters, available through UVM for free.

a.       First poster (analysis of PPMI data) First impressions

                                                   i.      Attractive, some white space could be used better. Consider reducing methodology.

1.       Poster: get people to stop and talk and connect

                                                 ii.      No naked decimals! (0.00) and no over precision (3 decimal places might be too many)

                                               iii.      What is the main message? 

1.       This is about the dataset and what new information was learned

                                               iv.      Simplify title; consider including the main message after the “:” or deleting the words after it entirely

                                                 v.      Coefficient table: is the goal to test the variable “PD duration” and confirm that the results were not confounded or to explore the potential significance of all the variables?

1.       Keep the table or link to with a QR code?

                                               vi.      Results: consider focusing (with graphs) on one or two points?

b.       Second poster (symptom progression) First impressions

                                                   i.      Also attractive; introduction and objective can be said more directly

                                                 ii.      Recheck headings

                                               iii.      Title considerations: what is the message

                                               iv.      Bar charts: differences in SD are not as meaningful as CI ranges, or eliminate the bars

                                                 v.      Eliminate the tables; put key numbers on the graphs

                                               vi.      Bring handouts with contact info/QR codes

c.       Third poster (depression and cognition) First impressions

                                                   i.      Beautiful box chart: what is the causal relationship presented? Consider putting MoCA on the x-axis.

                                                 ii.      Provide English interpretation

                                               iii.      Move key values from the table to the chart; eliminate the chart

                                               iv.      Message:

1.       At five years, depressed people had more dementia, but not at baseline

2.       Mean scores didn’t change much over time – is this important?  If so, say why

                                                 v.      What was the question: predictor is dementia (or decline?) and outcome is depression (or depression after decline?). Or decline in cognition and change in mood?

1.       Consider individual change scores the predictor

3.                   Schedule for rest of the month:

a.       June 29- Jen

Recorded by: CvE