CRAMSurg Workshop - From Think up to Write up: How to Make Your Local Surgical Project a Success

Are you starting a surgical project? Do you have an idea but you are not sure how to make it work? This course is for you!

This course is aimed at early career surgeons with no or limited experience in surgical projects, audit or local research. It will equip you with the skills and tools you require to make your project a success. We will cover the whole journey from start to finish including how to create your local project from a simple idea, literature search, dataset creation, data analysis, charting and writing.

The course will run with a mixture of lectures and facilitated small group work. In order to participate you will need to bring your own laptop and install the required software. We will give you all the information you need in advance.

Delegate numbers: 12
Grade: Early career surgical trainees, peri MRCS, or any surgeon with no or limited experience on how to run surgical projects (audit or local research)

IMPORTANT: 

The candidates will bring their own laptops and would have received instructions pre course on what to install to participate in the course.

The exercises are conducted in small groups of 4 people with a facilitator.

Each small group will have a mock project to carry forward from initial idea to literature review to database set up to analysis and write up.

Programme:

08:30 - 09:00 Registration
09:00 - 10:00 The think up - I have an idea (or my boss gave me one), what now?
                       Is my project research, audit or quality improvement?               
                       Where do I register my study?
                       The PICO format 
                       Think it up - PICO exercise
10:00 - 11:00 The search up - now I know what I want to do, how do I find out what’s been done or published                         before?
                       Medical and non medical search databases
                       How to do a literature review
                       Search it up - practice search strings/filters
11:00 - 11:15  Coffee Break
11:15 - 12:15 The set up - how do I set up my dataset?
                       Types of data
                       Software for dataset creation and maintenance
                       Common pitfalls
                       Set it up - create a dataset for your project
12:15 - 13:00  Lunch Break
13:00 - 15:00  The show up - analyse and chart your data
                        Summarising your results
                        Descriptive statistics what to use and when
                        Charts and tables what to use and when
                        Free software for data analysis
                        Basic principles and demonstration of univariate and multivariate analysis using free software
                       Show it up - practice producing appropriate descriptive statistics and charts for an example                                database using free software
15:00 - 15:15  Coffee Break
15:15 - 16:00  The write up - transform your data into an abstract and beyond
                        Abstract writing up
                        Referencing software
                        Abstract building

Room: Exchange 4