Family Medicine Case Scenario (ANSWERED)

QUESTION

Create a scholarly application paper that applies the PowerPoint and all required readings to solve the case scenario below.
A family medicine resident is told by her program director that she must present a project at the annual Research Day conference next year. She is swamped with clinical work and is studying for an upcoming board exam. The last thing she needs to add to her workload is a research project, and so she asks her director if she can skip the “research role” and spend the extra time and energy becoming a better physician. She comes to you for advice.

Assume the role of the preceptor. In the first paragraph of the paper, briefly summarize the purpose, need, or rationale for research in a specialty area of interest to you (e.g. family medicine, geriatrics…). In the body of the paper, discuss current trends and challenges facing medical education and how organized research can address these difficulties. In the last paragraph, offer the resident some advice on how to effectively plan research to help her get started.

Make sure to cite the readings applicable readings and PowerPoint.

ANSWER

Medical Education

Purpose, need, or rationale for research in family medicine.

Research is naturally part of family medicine because it is a scientific discipline. It helps advance knowledge in the field and improve scientific, educational, and clinical practice. However, De Maeseneer (2004) argues that family medicine practitioners cannot apply research evidence from other disciplines because its ecology is different. Family physicians usually serve as the first contact for various health problems hence, experience unique challenges. They deal with diseases in their early stages when symptoms are vague, and the prevalence of serious conditions is usually low.

However, when you look at existing RCTs, their study patients have well-defined diseases and meet specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Most family medicine patients do not meet these RCTs inclusion criteria because their illness is yet to develop sufficiently. These challenges explain why research in family medicine is needed.

Current Trends and Challenges and Solutions

Medical education research has become a vital data source. Regehr (2004) identified the current themes and trends in medical education: curriculum and teaching issues required professional skills and competence, student evaluation & accreditation requirements, and admission policies and student characteristics. There are efforts underway to integrate the results of educational research into policymaking. Unfortunately, these efforts have been thwarted by quality issues. The quality of educational research is limited by randomization issues, funding issues, cultural problems, and issues with defining research outcomes (Murray, 2002). According to Murray (2002), health service researchers lack the technical capacities for designing and implementing RCTs and defining desired results. Even when desired outcomes are clearly defined, the researchers lack the required assessment tools, making it nearly impossible to establish the intervention’s actual impact. They also experience problems related to obtaining formal consent before randomization and students’ unwillingness to participate in medical education due to complex school schedules and timetables. Educational research capacity is also low and only attracts low-caliber applicants (Murray, 2002). Even then, those involved focus more on service development and implementation than creating evidence. These challenges result in low-quality evidence, hindering the use of educational research in policymaking.

An organized or community-level/programmatic approach to research offers a solution to these challenges. Regehr (2004) claims that in the absence of communal effort, the value of medical education research is limited due to the incoherent accrual of information. Scholars in educational research must work together toward a shared goal. According to Regehr (2004), themes that lack a coherent purpose are less satisfying upon development, more abstract than concrete, and more theoretical than real. In contrast, those with a coherent purpose seemed valid and value-adding to the scholarly community. Therefore, we must endeavor to collaborate and support individuals working on promising lines of research and build a mutual understanding of various topics. This approach is the only way to advance the field (Regehr, 2004).

Advice to Resident

You have a professional and moral obligation to help advance the profession. It would be best if you collaborated with other scientists in your research endeavors. Find a mentor who will provide advice & protection, resources, and opportunities to join research meetings, academic/social functions, lectures, conferences, etc. Apart from the mentor, it would also help if you had research collaborators, e.g., fellow students and colleagues. Recruit these collaborators to help in data collection and project co-authoring. Ensure you adhere to research ethics, including informed consent. Use online resources to find a sponsor who will fund your project. Lastly, conduct a literature review to generate research ideas or find research gaps. Apply a study design in your research, refine the research question, collect data to answer the research question, analyze your data and findings, conclude, and publish the findings. Share and disseminate these findings with all relevant stakeholders.

References

De Maeseneer, J. M. (2004). Why Research in Family Medicine? A Superfluous Question. The Annals of Family Medicine, 2(suppl_2), S17–S22. https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.148

Murray, E. (2002). Challenges in educational research. Medical education, 36(2), 110-112. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2923.2002.01155.x

Regehr, G. (2004). Trends in medical education research. Academic Medicine, 79(10), 939-947. http://www.imerg.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Regher-2004-Trends-in-Research.pdf