Intro to Research

Intro to Research

Week 1

This is a Genially. They are interactive, so make sure you're exploring everything on a page!

What is Research?

“The systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusion”

Why do I care as a student?

As a student in OTC's RT programs, you are required to perform research! However, the importance of research goes far beyond what you'll do during your tenure in the program. It's crucial to understand not only how research is done, but how it effects you as a clinician.

How does this effect my practice?

Click on me!

Hospital educators make equipment/therapy decisions

Provides a opportunity to explore new concepts

Understand past practices and the timeline of new therapies

Improve patient outcomes

Keep up to date on changing practices

Interpretation of literature

"The decision to incorporate a new treatment modality depends on the ability to assess and understand the research that led to that modality"

Knowing and understanding what role research plays in your daily practice...

It makes you a better therapist!

Why is research necessary?

Performing research is at the core of everything we do! Comparing vacuums to see which one is better suited to us is research, for example. Albeit less scientific, but still research! Problems in the medical field need answers, and the best way to do that is by designing research that answers that specific problem. The medical field is a revolving door of problems that need to be solved. The only way to advance a field is to provide evidence behind changes.

Best Practices

All best practices are based in scientific finding. There's a reason we don't perform bloodletting anymore! In order to make sure our patients are getting high quality care, we must learn about things more indepth, and make sure we are using the most up-to-date practices.

Research is the gap between an idea and clinical practice

• Research is:
• Seeking an answer to a question
• Gathering information
• Having curiosity in a topic
• Applying valid questions to advance our clinical practice
• Research is not:
• Hiding in a lab for weeks on end doing things irrelevant to clinical practice
• BORING
• Disconnected from clinical practice

There's a lot to research!

My goal for you in this class is to become more comfortable with the general types of research, statistical analysis, and interpretation of data. You will have to perform research later on in the program, and this course builds the foundational knowledge to be successful in that future course. Research can often be intimidating for students, and that's okay. We will break it down!

Types of Research

Applied

Pure Research

Experimental

Descriptive

Laboratory

Clinical

Literature reviews

Defining the problem

Interpretation

Conclusions

research

Results

Publication

Data collections

Design and methodology

There are so many parts to research that we will get to explore this semester!

Questions?

Reach out!

New therapy, who dis?

Again, practices change all the time. Just recently, HFNC has become a new favorite, but it's a relatively new therapy!

New protocol, who dis?

• More and more research is coming out that focuses on outcomes of various sorts.
• Does this therapy improve ventilator length of stay?
• ICU length of stay?
• Hospital length of stay?
• Does this therapy HURT our patients?
• There are PLENTY of things we do that are actually associated with INCREASED mortality, yet we continue to do them often.
• Keep up-to-date on research can actually save lives!

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How has the respiratory field advanced?

• Research gives us a timeline to see how far we've come in the field.
• RT's used to be called "oxygen orderly's" in the early 1950's, and focused mainly on oxygen therapy.
• We used to think huge tidal volumes (12-15 ml/kg) were good! (ARDSnet trial only came out in 2000!)
• Used to have on the job training!

Research keeps the profession moving forward... How do we know what we're doing is best practice if we don't test it?

What do you do when you don't understand something?

You investigate! You do research!

• Research is more than controlled trials. You, as a student, do research all the time when you investigate the answer to a question.
• In this course, you'll have the opportunity to explore some additional topics you might want to dive into more.

Research changes constantly!

• Every so often research come out that makes us re-evaluate our current practices.
• As a department manager or educator, it's important to stay up to date on current practices AND current equipment.
• Oh? New study says that HFNC is non-inferior to NIV in patients with hypercapnic respiratory failure? Let's look at getting more HFNC's.
• New GOLD guidelines? Let's update our protocols.

Not all research is created equal...

• As RT's, it's crucial to have a basic understanding of the types of research coming to light, which research has more "weight" than others, and how to interpret the findings of studies.
• We don't want to place a lot of bearing in a study that only was done on 2 people...
• Smaller trials can show us potential application, but we need to perform larger trials to truly test efficacy.
• Additionally, clinical experience only goes so far...
• There are plenty of anecdotal experiences that are valid, but without proper testing of theories, we won't know for use which things are worth our time.