Research news - widening participation

Widening participation – transforming an internal workshop to a 3 day professional development short course

Dr Mary Hickson and team successfully launched a new 3 day course “Introduction to Research” on 18-20 July 2011. The teaching faculty includes Margaret Coffey, Donna Kennedy and Liesl Wandrag. The course was run in collaboration with Betty Yue's team in the School of Professional Development, at Imperial College South Kensington Campus. The 6 half day workshops, usually run for internal candidates, on key skills and knowledge helpful to people starting out in research was restructured to a 3 full day course covering understanding statistics, critical appraisal, searching the literature, using questionnaires, choosing robust outcome measures, and disseminating your research. 

The course was complemented with a pre-course e-learning module on “Critical Appraisal” which participants have found very useful. Attended mainly by therapists and nurses on the internal course, this new short course attracted a wider range of healthcare professionals including doctors, physiotherapists and dieticians. Comments from participants include:
“Provides a very helpful foundation to understanding others research and begin to think about developing own research”
“I would absolutely advise people to have this course, especially if they have no adequate exposure to research”
“Very good introduction to starting out in research. Very good for anyone wishing to start out in undertaking research”
“I would recommend it for FCEM examination candidates”
The course was also approved by the Royal College of Physicians for 18 CPD points. Mary and Betty plan to refine the course and offer it on a regular basis to all healthcare professionals.