EUNICE CHAN JIAXUAN (ZENG JIAXUAN)

Background

We were mainly tagged along to the research team and learned about the ways that they cope with what they are doing and how they function as a whole. Our main job scope was to conduct/ sit-in in interviews, redesign newsletters and conduct simple analysis on some data provided. We were also tasked to finish a simple presentation talking pertaining to our experiences in Tampines Plaza and the lessons that we have learnt.

Dr How’s Assignment

On the first 2 days, we were tasked with researching and understanding doctor-patient risk communication and how they affect the way doctors convey their message to patients. We were asked to research on factors that affect the way patients’ understanding of risk is impacted or changed and how doctors can convey their message more effectively. This project aims to let everyone understand the importance of conveying risk in the clearest and single-headed way such that patients will be able to understand risk in the most effective way.

In order to carry out these assignments, we were given a brief explanation on how we can conduct our research. We were exposed to a lot of different websites which we can use to get our information from, such as pubmed. We were also given a crash-course into how we can make sure that the information we search for is what we want.

He gave us a brief entry into how we can research, by

1. Using key terms
2. Using short phrases
3. Using full sentences

We also learned about how we can conduct a research project and found out that carrying out a research project uses up a lot of time as we have to constantly make sure that the source that we get our information from is trustworthy. In order to do so, it is important to cross-check with as many sources as available and make sure that every source was talking about the same information. The resources put into this project are time, a lot of research, and space for us to consolidate our thoughts and piece it all together.

At the point I joined this project, this task has already been done by a number of researchers out there who have already done their research and pen-down their thoughts on this topic. However, we were expected to start on this project fresh from the start.

Hence, we started by completing a rough gauge of what we wanted to appear in our proposal. We used what we have learnt and started on our research, using the websites given to us. However, after we were done with our assignment and sent it to Felicia for her to check whether we were on the right path, we realised that there were quite a lot of factors that we did not include in our proposal and that there were so many more ways we can improve our proposal. It was important not to only look at the problem from the patients’ point of view, but also the doctor’s point of view and how we can help assist doctors convey their message. Additionally, we were also given insight into how environmental factors, such as how the initial knowledge that patients possess affect how these risks are being communicated to them.

The rationale for such a process was to ultimately find ways where doctor-patient communication can be improved, and how this can benefit future doctors and patients and give them some ideas into improving this problem.

Some challenges that I faced while doing this research was that there were a lot of information readily available on the internet, but finding the information best suited for this research was a bit of a hassle as there were a lot of articles that we can go through. Other than this, I thought that this project was actually fairly fun to do!

After this, we also researched on communication of risk in patients. Before we settled on this topic, we had wanted to do Dr How’s research on trust and patient dissatisfaction between patient and doctor, but after hearing Dr How’s view on how patient dissatisfaction and trust would be a hard topic to do, we decided to change it to communication of risk in patients. We came up with survey questions on this topic, which we were planning to ask patients in the A&E. however, as we were informed that we were not able to enter the A&E, we continued on our research on this topic and asked people around us on their knowledge on certain risks around them. It was interesting getting to know their opinion on different types of risks and how we can better communicate such information to them such that they can better understand these risks!

Newsletter

Next, we went to Tampines Plaza to work with professional researchers Rebecca and Mila and helped with whatever they needed our help with. We focused primarily on the newsletter production and spent most of our time there editing the newsletter design and its contents. This project aims to spread awareness of the 4 different aspects of research, mainly

1. health economics,
2. qualitative research
3. health assessment technology
4. artificial intelligence

The newsletter that we have designed and come out with would be circulated around CGH to the staff personnel working there, mainly the nurses, etc. We were given a template of what was expected of our final product and we were tasked to redesign it to make it more layman and easier to understand.

At the point I joined the project, there has already been a template of what was expected of us to do. We were mainly supposed to reduce the amount of content to make it easier to understand, and also to make the newsletter more aesthetically appealing such that staff in CGH will be more inclined to look at it and understand what the newsletter is trying to convey.

The resources put into this project were primarily Canva, which is a website where there are multiple templates for us to choose from in order to construct our newsletter. We were able to design our newsletter using that website, together with the images and fonts that we could find.

I am grateful that there was help provided along the way and this project helped me know more about the topic that I was assigned in, qualitative analysis. Initially, I was not sure of the purpose of conducting qualitative analysis and its difference to quantitative analysis, but after researching more on this topic and going through the previous newsletter that was provided for us, it gave me an insight into what qualitative analysis was all about.

One of the main challenges of this task was to water down the information in such a way that it is easier to understand. As most of the information available on the internet were more profound and full of information, I thought that a lot of work was needed into making it layman and easier to understand as you needed to fully understand what the topic was all about. Furthermore, as we were also expected to create a design for the new newsletter, I wasn’t very confident with the design that I wanted with this project.

However, I thought that this was a fun experience as we got to design something new and learn more about the topic that we were assigned with.

Interview and transcription

Next, we also sat-in on an interview with external parties from active SG, etc. where we talked about ongoing projects that they have been a part of and how we can improve such projects to make it better for the public, etc. I learned and listened to a lot of valuable feedback and ideas on how several projects can be improved.

We were then tasked with transcription. We were supposed to type out every single word uttered by the interviewee into words. Before we started, Rebecca and Mila gave us instructions on how we were supposed to carry out our transcription. I realized that there was a lot of things that we needed to take note of in order to make sure that our transcription was correct. After that, we were given time to complete our work.

Some challenges that I faced was transcripting every single word out onto words. As we were expected to type out everything, I found it quite tedious as I had to replay the audio a lot of times in order to get a gist of what the interviewee is saying. Luckily, as I had already sat for the interview, I was able to understand most of what the interviewee was saying.

Another challenge that I faced was that there were some words which were inaudible. As i could not understand the word that the interviewee was saying, I had to go back in the audio a lot of times to find out what he meant. In the end, when I am really unable to decipher what is being said, I had no choice but to leave a timestamp to indicate that I was not able to understand.

As this project requires the transcription to be very accurate and precise, After typing out the whole transcription, I had to listen to the whole audio once more to make sure that there were no errors in the process.

I felt that this was quite a new experience as I got to try out something that I did not try before.

P-value

Other than these, we were also tasked with smaller tasks such as typing in values into the computer, which will later be used for analysis, and also understanding these values and learning how to use the p-value to determine whether such values are useful.

Although it is a relatively small task, I felt that it was challenging as we were not given any information as to what p-value meant and thus, we had to search online about its uses and what it means in that context.

To put it in short, a p-value of 0.05 and more indicates that the data is statistically non significant, and that there is no significant difference between these 2 sets of data and the values are similar, while a p-value of 0.05 and less indicates that the data is statistically significant, and that there is significant difference between 2 sets of data.

3 content knowledge or skills learnt

1. We learned how to conduct proper research using the steps and guidelines that they have given us. Our mentors have given us some useful tips on how we should be looking at our research and what are the steps that we have to take in order to fully delve into the problem at hand. After completing our initial report, we realized that it was not enough and more thought needs to be given into our research. Similarly for other projects, even after submitting our initial report, we were required to further think about whether it answers our questions and how we can further improve what we want to find to make it clearer and easier to understand. It is also important to fully understand our objective that we want to achieve so that we will be able to look at the topic from different perspectives and find out different points of views of the topic.
2. Learning about how to transcript and sitting in the interviews was also a skill learnt as I was now more aware of the different rules that I have to follow while transcripting. I felt like knowing how to transcript will be useful in the future as it will be easier for anyone to understand what I have transcripted since it is standardized.
3. Different ways of researching. I realized that there were many different ways of researching, but the most important was still finding the most effective way for us to conduct our research. Concerning medical information, there were also a few websites that were more popular among researchers and more helpful in helping them find what they want to find. I thought that this was different from what I had done when I have been conducting research as I did not delve that deep into trying to find information that I need. This was a useful skill as it has allowed me to delve deeper into the topic instead of only looking at the problem and topic from the surface.

2 interesting aspects of your learning

1. I thought it was interesting how we got to do things at our own pace and plan our own time instead of having a strict schedule that we must follow. This has given me more time and space to complete whatever I needed to complete since time was more flexible!
2. I also thought that the designing of newsletter and its progress was quite fun as we got to finish up a project which will most likely be circulated around CGH in the future for future references. Moreover, I also got to know more about topics that I normally would not touch, such as health technology assessment and health economics.

1 takeaway for life

One thing that was precious and unique was the knowledge that I’ve gained from this experience. From learning about the different research techniques and how we can further improve our analysis, to the bonds that we have forged with our mentors and learnt about the way things work, it was very valuable. I find that these experiences are hard to have especially since we are still in school, but I am grateful for this opportunity to learn more about how working life is like and what we can expect in the future. This has also opened up more job opportunities that I never knew were available and once again peaked my interest in certain fields, like medicine etc. It also gave me an idea of the different job opportunities present and what we can do should we want to pursue more knowledge in that field.