Research Topic ideas?

[yol467]

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Hi everyone,

I'm going into my last year of Pharmacy in the fall (I'm from Canada so we don't have the direct entry PharmD program yet but that's another issue for another day!). The elective I chose this year is Independent Directed Research... and it's exactly what it claims: I work independently (along with the supervision of a faculty member) and complete a directed research project in 4 months which is then presented to the faculty members of the College.

Why question for you all today is this: what are some interesting research topics that I could further develop and explore in a 4 month period? It can probably be anything prospective or retrospective however I'm not sure as to how intense my level of "subject involvement" can be. I have a feeling I may be limited to the amount of intervention I can do but I'm open to all suggestions...

Any ideas?
Thanks!

 

[xiphoid2010]

Hi everyone,

I'm going into my last year of Pharmacy in the fall (I'm from Canada so we don't have the direct entry PharmD program yet but that's another issue for another day!). The elective I chose this year is Independent Directed Research... and it's exactly what it claims: I work independently (along with the supervision of a faculty member) and complete a directed research project in 4 months which is then presented to the faculty members of the College.

Why question for you all today is this: what are some interesting research topics that I could further develop and explore in a 4 month period? It can probably be anything prospective or retrospective however I'm not sure as to how intense my level of "subject involvement" can be. I have a feeling I may be limited to the amount of intervention I can do but I'm open to all suggestions...

Any ideas?
Thanks!

Coming from a research background, my advice is don't do prospective study in such a short time frame. It takes forever to get IRB and R&D approval, then then takes forever to enroll patients. Few PGY-1 residents around here didn't know better and ended up badly. They were lucky to even get 1-3 patients for data at the end. Do a retrospective chart review and ones where the outcome is numerical/statistically quantifiable (rather than subjective measures).

 

[yol467]

Coming from a research background, my advice is don't do prospective study in such a short time frame. It takes forever to get IRB and R&D approval, then then takes forever to enroll patients. Few PGY-1 residents around here didn't know better and ended up badly. They were lucky to even get 1-3 patients for data at the end. Do a retrospective chart review and ones where the outcome is numerical/statistically quantifiable (rather than subjective measures).

Thanks for that info!

 

[npage148]

retrospective analysis of chronic nitroglycerin use and cataract formation.

 

[Praziquantel86]

Prospective is a nightmare as a student, I can't recommend highly enough against it - particularly if this is your first research project. Pick a topic you're interested in, find holes in the data (sections of guidelines with weak recommendations are a great place to start), the think about how you would plug those holes.

If you have access to a hospital with a fully integrated EMR, you can do an awful lot in not very much time. If you're going to be stuck pulling data by hand (i.e., chart review), you'd be better off picking something with a smaller dataset.

Another alternative is to use large multihospital databases, of which I'm sure Canada has plenty. You should be able to purchase access to a dataset and get incredible information when the right statistics are applied.

 

[Sparda29]

I'm gonna be doing something based on "Assessing Pharmacy Services in a Diabetes Clinic"