Reading... and Reading... and more Reading...

So I didnt meet with Diana on Thursday, September 17 like we had planned. Relatives from Sacramento came down to visit me last minute on Monday night and stayed until Wednesday morning. This was supposed to be my reading day, but I barely got anything done and was feeling sick and did not want to waste Diana's time because I know she's really busy especially with all the projects she's apart of so we rescheduled.
So instead of our meeting, I made sure to read articles. Diana emailed me later in the day on Monday after we met the guidelines she wished me to follow when summarizing these research articles.

Here they are:

1. What was the study question? and what were the objectives?
2. Whom is the study about? Who was recruited and how were they recruited? Who was included or excluded from the study?
3. What type of study was done? What terms were used to describe the design?
4. What risk factor of predictor or intervention was studied?
5. What outcomes was studied?
6. What was the sample size?
7. If subjects were followed over a period of time, what was the duration of follow up?
8. How complete was the follow up? How many subjects droped out?
9. What evidence, correlations, associations, or causation was found?
10. What statistical tests were done? and Were they statiscally significant?
11. Were the effects "clinically significant"? Were they large or small effects?

Having these questions handy, I went to work reading, reading, reading! Having these questions made it easier for me to read the articles. I plan on keeping the questions and using them for future assignments whether it be for this research and internship or even for class. It gives me the general information I should be looking for in any article.
These articles are still hard to read and take time since I do have to look up words here and there. I finished the article about African Americans and cancers-which was partly done by a UCLA professor Martin Shapiro. I also started reading and looking over the articles in the physician satisfaction section. This packet was the biggest so I was trying to separate them based on the overall topic that it focused on. I found common themes in the research papers. The articles focused on one or many of the following topics: burnout and depersonalization of physicians, the effects of the organization of healthcare and administrations, what effects women physician satisfaction, what factors affect minority physicians satisfaction, and how the autonomy of a physician affects satisfaction. There were no a lot of studies on the way government policies affect physician care or satisfaction, or how physician's income affects their work and satisfaction. Other potential themes that were not researched were: the quality of care and the access to specialists effects and the effects of a physicians workload (hours worked and number of patients).
That was just a list of things I noticed from many of the articles abstracts and titles. I still had a lot of articles to read completely... it sure can get tiring though!
Oh, and I was able to get my schedule switched for the meeting on the 21st. It was going to be presentation about qualitative research from a RAND research scientist named Dr. Gery Ryan. And some of the other fellows will be discussing their work and research. Diana said I didn't have to go to the second half, but that she recommended the presentation. I'm glad I was able to make my schedule work for it!
More to come... ttyl!