Doing clinical research for the first time this summer

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idkididk

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MS1 here who landed an ophtho research opportunity with a former boss. I've never done clinical search before, and hated doing bench research. I've never written a poster/abstract/anything, so I haven't the faintest clue as to where to start. I expect my mentor to be super busy as he always is, but there are few other great docs in the office who I can turn to for advice. Does anyone have any links to guides on doing clinical research for the first time?
 
I've only ever assisted in one clinical research project, in EM, and my experience was that they will tell you exactly what is expected of you, i.e. what data to collect from the EMR or what types of patients to recruit. I'm hoping to land a research opportunity this summer as well.
 
It really depends on the type of research and what your role will be. Is this a huge multicentre prospective study or just something this doc has going at their own hospital? Prospective/retrospective? If there is a good protocol written it shouldn't be too hard to adjust to.


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It really depends on the type of research and what your role will be. Is this a huge multicentre prospective study or just something this doc has going at their own hospital? Prospective/retrospective? If there is a good protocol written it shouldn't be too hard to adjust to.


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Pretty much this. Also, what exactly is your role in the project - are you just assisting with reviewing some charts or will you take on a larger role/primary authorship? If it's the latter, I would definitely look into relevant literature associated with your research prior to starting. Something I found helpful (especially if I anticipated primary authorship) was to do a relevant search of the literature, compile sources and then write out a summary of said current literature. This would help immensely with drafting an intro/discussion of a manuscript and would also help in having more productive/intelligible discussions with your PI.
 
The best way to approach this is to see what your mentor has published in this area in the past. They typically have a limited number of methodologies, and a limited number of statistical analyses they use to do their work.
 
It's a bit of an odd situation. I'll be working at his private practice (where I used to work) and doing research with him as a research elective with the med school that he's affiliated with (part-time). He takes masters students every year for their thesis project, so maybe my best bet is to hunt down 1 or 2 of them and discuss with them..
 
It's a bit of an odd situation. I'll be working at his private practice (where I used to work) and doing research with him as a research elective with the med school that he's affiliated with (part-time). He takes masters students every year for their thesis project, so maybe my best bet is to hunt down 1 or 2 of them and discuss with them..

Why don't you just try and set a meeting with the PI to clear the air with the project and know exactly what you're doing?


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