Roll On : UKM Pharmacy Research Project (Part one)

Mar 22, 2016


The Effect of Shared Decision Making on Medication Adherence, Treatment Satisfaction and Glycaemic Control of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients in 
Pusat Perubatan Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia


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That is my research project tittle if you still didn't get it. I thought it would be nice to share the bits and pieces so maybe someone might actually benefit from it or maybe I simply give myself the chance to re-read this in like 20 years time so that i can reminiscence. I'm a sap that way.

Btw, this post might be tad too late for current batch. Sorry?

First of all, in UKM pharmacy programme, you kind of divided into two category; doing survey or lab work. A few student will be assigned to a lecturer/supervisor. You can practically guess what you're going to do if you already know your supervisor especially of those doing labwork since it will be related to your supervisor forte. I'm doing survey, but I can might manage to tell something about lab work since I like to chat with my friend about what they do. We even manage to do some discussion though for all its worth, it is a really basic kind of discussion.

Survey itself maybe of clinical based or pharmacy practice based. Pharmacy practice is like these ideas on understanding the community. Vaguely speaking of course, go Google it to get better understanding. You can do things like I have done here, studying shared decision making (SDM) effect particularly of medication adherence and satisfaction. SDM is a model on decision making whereby both doctors and patient are equally responsible to decide. Some studied the patient belief on medicine, knowledge, perception etc etc. Apart from patient, there are some of us doing research on pharmacist and general public, as well as student. We would specified our population of course. My supervisor allowed us to choose our own population. Basically, I chose to approach diabetic patients. Since I also studies patient glycaemic/diabetic control using actual lab data, it is part clinical. Clinical based is this actual lab tools measured effect on body; like a friend of mine taking urine sample to look on salt intake and give out questionnaire to understand his respondent salt intake style. 

Lab people have a wider spectrum of research type. Some identify compound in plants, some study formulation profile, some do stability testing, some do this effect of stuff on mice things. Oh my, i am horrible. The point is, you need to reach for the RIGHT people to help you.

The research project you will be doing solely depends on your supervisor. I got this list of possible project we can do as well as rough explanation on what it really is. We decide among ourselves who will be doing what. Some supervisor simply assigned one for you, others might give you the freedom to choose. Very little though, it's also very confusing since doing a research meaning you need to venture on new things so having supervisor help is better. Troublesome to make sure no one actually done it. Don't worry, there will be no easy way if you thought choosing by yourself could get you. One thing or another, all kind of tittle have it's own specific challenge. 

We started our research project on the second semester of third year. It is a two semester course. However, on this first semester we focused on doing research proposal presentation, ethics application and literature review writing. On research proposal presentation, we will explain about our project and how we are going to do about it. The big why this research is needed, the justification, aims, target sample size, who is included who is not, the questionnaire used yada yada yada. It is as detailed as possible with the limit of time/slides given. You'll have slides and present in front few lecturers/examiners and all your coursemates. For the lab work, it generally the same but of course more lab based like the procedure used, standard to complied etc etc.  I'm not sure how much detailed they went by.

After that, since we, the survey peeps, are dealing with human respondents, we have to apply ethics approval. It is this long list of paperwork you need to do it ASAP since the ethics committee will meet few times per month only. If i'm not mistaken, twice only. I think some of us doing outside PPUKM might need to apply some others ethic application, KKM and things. Do make sure you clarify first with your supervisor. You need to send a research proposal also, in this document form. We agreed that by doing this detailed research proposal document earlier is better because you got all the actual data right and can go on to apply the ethics letter right away after research proposal presentation. You can just simplified the document for the slides in the presentation. I have done this way. Lab peeps don't need to do this except if they were using animals (mice of cource) and then need to specifically asked the ethics approval of haiwan thingy. They will decide how much mice you going to get among other things. Ours is simply filling up some form and sent it, these lab peeps need to do another presentation. Life and death situation thingy need more details.

By this time you have some papers you have referred to, have it listed and properly documented as in an actual database. You will need it for your literature review. Do a really good database please! There are few websites that allow you to "steal" research paper that need to be buy. ASK YOUR SENIORS. I'm not going to put those link in my blog. Sorry peeps, no can do.

Then you will do your literature review. THIS IS THE DEAL. You need to read tonnes of paper to understand the current situation. Like hundreds. Start as early as possible to do rough layout on what you want to discuss in your literature review and have it checked by your supervisor. If you like this damn slowest person on earth, at least get this done and checked by your supervisor. Some supervisor were thrilled to check your literature review in details, use them! Though of course you can't push them if you like, well, late. Have it sent early for them to check. Get their insight. It will give a more credible literature review and most importantly getting you on the right track. Seriously, my supervisor helped me a lot on this. I missed lots of important point on my first draft and get some concept wrong. I'm also this stupid which she has to explain few times before i can get the actual idea. Really use your supervisor.

You will have some workshop, i think by this time, few workshop has been done (referring to the current third year batch). Like the ethic things, the lab safety, the literature review, etc etc. Fret not my dear, you can ask in finer details in this workshops. You can also asked the library to held workshop one how to browse journals that UKM have subscribe as well as EndNote software to arrange your citations. I don't use it though, i preferred to do it on my own. Some of my friend also said that do it yourselves is easier. Some thing bout EndNote don't have the actually UKM citation style. Some also said it is easier. 

Make sure you were using the right formatting style!!

Anyhow, it will only be checked on fourth year. You can still re-edit some minor stuff afterwards. Believe me, some stupid mistakes bound to happen which you won't detect it until you actually read it back two months after. Like this post. We're a wreck that way.


no particular reason

p/s: i sounded off. grumpy? i'm having fever, currently very lethargy. I watched like 4 episodes of supernatural and have the funniest sleep schedule last night. who on earth slept at 830 pm and wake up at 1130pm just the sleep back near 5 am and woke up at 630 am and can't sleep back until like 1130am. me. 


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