Unlocking potential: The benefits of research mentoring in pediatrics
McMaster Department of Pediatrics Research Advisory Committee’s Research Mentorship Working Group
Join us in person for this special Research Roundtable focusing on the role of mentorship in research. This session is designed for faculty at all career stages, for those who are mentors as well as those seeking mentorship. We will include dedicated time for small group and one-on-one discussions to explore your research mentorship needs.
Social epidemiology is a field of epidemiology that seeks to understand the roles of social factors at the population level that lead to variation in health outcomes with particular attention to the contexts and mechanisms of social processes. In this presentation, I will use the example of parental job quality to discuss the intersection of social and clinical epidemiology and consider the role of clinical researchers in studying the effects of social contexts on child health.
Learning Objectives: 1. Define and distinguish between clinical and social epidemiology. 2. Describe strategies for using population-level data to answer questions in social epidemiology 3. Gain insight into ways that parental employment quality may lead to differential child and youth health outcomes
The Impact of Changes to the MacPeds Simulation Curriculum on the Acquisition of Procedural EPA Assessments and Resident’s Perceived Competence
Dr. Usman Ahmed, PGY2
Supervisors:Dr. Charushree Prasad, Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, McMaster University; Dr. Elif Bilgic, Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, McMaster University; Dr. Miona Milutinov, Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, McMaster University
A unique challenge within Pediatrics, a non-surgical specialty, is the limited clinical exposure to gain competence in essential procedural skills, described in the RCPSC Pediatric Competencies (2021). Simulation based training has been an innovative and widely adopted format in post-graduate programs to provide more frequent exposure to infrequent yet essential procedural skills. Our study will explore the impact of recent changes made to the McMaster Pediatrics simulation curriculum on resident’s self-perceived procedural skill competence and completion of procedural EPA assessments.
Learning Objective: 1. Understand the current landscape of the McMaster Pediatrics Simulation Curriculum and recent changes made to support resident procedural skill development.
Dr. Anne Klassen, Professor, Department of Pediatrics, & Shelby Kennedy, PhD Candidate
To measure the success of pediatric health care, it is important to ask children and youth how they function and feel before and after they have treatment. A special type of questionnaire called a patient-reported outcome measure (i.e., PROM) is carefully designed for this specific purpose. PROMs are important in health care because they measure things that matter the most to patients rather than ask about things that matter the most to health care providers or researchers. This presentation will provide examples of how to develop and validate a PROM based on the GENDER-Q, a new PROM designed to measure outcomes of gender-affirming care.
Learning Objectives:
To learn what a PRO is and why they are important.
Weather-related transport delays in critical care in Ontario
Dr. Jacquie Mincer, PGY2
Supervisors:Dr. Elif Bilgic, Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, McMaster University & Dr. Anna Gunz, Associate Professor at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University
As the climate crisis evolves, there will be ongoing increases in the frequency and severity of temperature and weather extremes. These weather and temperature events have the potential to disrupt the ability for land and air ambulance services to continue to operate, which could affect the ability for patients requiring critical care transport across the province to get to destinations that can provide the specialized care that they require. To understand the degree of potential service disruption, we first must have a good understanding of the baseline operational status of these systems. Our study will examine existing service disruptions due to extreme temperature and weather events that result in transport delays in Ontario, across the largest air medical transport service in North America, the Ornge Air Ambulance service.
Learning Objective:
Invite discussion around the study’s proposed objectives and methodology.
Special Session: Finding your way in youth & family engagement in research
Karen Beattie, Elizabeth Chambers, Samantha Micsinszki, Andrea Cross
On Friday, March 22nd, the Brigher Path Collaborative is supporting a special open session of McMaster University’s Department of Pediatrics’ monthly Research Roundtable seminar series for learners, staff, and faculty across the Faculty of Health Sciences who have a focus on child-health research.
The culture and practice of child health research can be transformed through meaningful engagement with youth and families as equal partners. Yet questions remain on how to support meaningful and authentic engagement in research. In this session, best practices will be described for how researchers, youth, and family caregivers can partner together throughout the entire research process. Presenters will share some of their personal experiences and lessons learned as researchers and family partners, as well as multiple tools and resources that can be used to support meaningful engagement.
Learning Objectives:
To increase knowledge and awareness of foundational patient and family engagement in research principles and best practices include:
Why youth and family engagement in research is important in research
How to engage youth and families throughout the entire research process including how to find each other, work together, and evaluate the engagement process and impact.
In this presentation, I will offer attendees a brief overview of the incidence and prevalence of pediatric hypertension in Canada. I will describe the rationale behind conducting validation studies and highlight their crucial role in ensuring data quality and reliability in epidemiological research. I will also detail the methodology employed in a validation study along with the potential research opportunities it presents.
Learning Objectives:
Understand the impact/prevalence of hypertension in the pediatric population of Ontario
Gain an understanding of statistical analyses used in validation studies
Understand potential areas of study that can be explored with a large validated pediatric hypertensive cohort
This rounds presentation will offer tales and experiences from a career-long engagement as a clinical and health services researcher who started small and got hooked! My hope is to share lessons learned about how to approach research in our field by starting with curiosity and questions (rather than the ‘mechanics’ of research) and how to have a huge amount of fun as a life-long learner.
Learning Objectives:
To introduce perspectives about clinical/health services research.
To suggest that research should be approached from the WTQ? Direction rather that starting with methodology.
To illustrate my ideas with personal experiences (mainly from CanChild’s extensive involvement).
The CPS Advocacy group and McMaster Childrens hospital is in the process of creating a community garden space at McMaster Childrens Hospital. The purpose of my research project is to connect with stakeholders of this project through surveys and semi-structured interviews. I want to perform a needs assessment to determine the community’s needs for this garden, before construction begins. My aim is to have community input at every stage of the project from design, to building, to implementation.
Learning Objectives:
Understand the need for green space at Mac and the benefits of nature time on hospitalized patients.
Identify various stakeholders in this community garden project including family members, patients, staff, allied health and community.
Invoke an EDI focused lens to evaluate the needs of the garden and future directions.
macpedsrrt.ca 