Do you offer any seminars or workshops?

Each year, the RMU offers three training opportunities:

• Qualitative Health Research Seminar Series

Qualitative research approaches offer powerful tools for research where context is important, measurement is not easy and where issues are sensitive and multifaceted, particularly in areas such as improving patient safety, clinical decision-making, patient satisfaction, patient self-management, collaborative care, access to health care, and data driven and IT based interventions.

Methods and tools such as observation, interviews, focus groups, systematic reviews, textual analysis, and the use of media (photographs, video) can generate valuable data for research studies aimed at improving health, health care practices and delivery. These types of studies can function as stand-alone or as a complement to other forms of research.

This six-session seminar series, largely drawing on readings from patient safety literature (prescribing and polypharmacy), aims to demonstrate how qualitative approaches can provide a foundation to begin thinking about research in your own clinical area. This seminar series takes place in the winter each year. Please contact the RMU for information on future offerings.

• Introduction to Biostatistics in Health Research

This three-part workshop series will introduce participants to basic statistical methodology used in health research. Topics included in this workshop are: foundation concepts, such as definition of the p-value, statistical vs. clinical significance; confidence intervals; minimum clinically important difference; sample size; and power. The analysis of continuous, dichotomous and time-to-event data will be discussed as well as common analytic approaches when dealing with continuous data and dichotomous data, including discussion of appropriate tests. This seminar series takes place in the spring each year. Please contact the RMU for information on future offerings.

• Introduction to Health Economics in Health Research

In an environment of limited healthcare resources, it is often difficult to decide where to get the biggest bang for the healthcare buck and how to ensure efficient use of available resources. Health economics provides approaches to weighing the cost and benefits of new healthcare interventions to help decision makers identify which interventions are most beneficial in a public healthcare system.

This introductory, three-part workshop series will provide participants with an understanding of commonly used techniques in health economics. Topics include: an overview of the field of health economics; types of economic analysis; techniques for measuring costs; techniques for measuring health-related quality of life; and techniques used in health economic modeling. Participants will gain valuable skills toward applying health economic approaches in their own research.
This introductory workshop series will involve a blend of interactive and lecture-based learning. Topics will be addressed in theory only; therefore, no coding ability or software is required.