General Medicine: research elective

The following description is a general guideline for the elective. You and your preceptor will arrange details. Please recognize that your elective is enhanced by your planning and preparation before the month and finishing touches after the month. General Medicine offers a broad range of research topics in general medicine (epidemiology, preventive health care, cost-containment, medical decision making, ethics, physical diagnosis, perioperative care, health care of minorities, critical literature review, informatics, etc). Please see the recent publications by Division faculty(http://medicine.uthscsa.eud/Department/publications.htm#GENMED).

1. now, before you choose rotations for next year, contact Bob Badgett (617-5110) or Andy Diehl (358-3941). After reviewing your ideas, we will match you with a preceptor.
2. by the start of the month, you must prepare a one-page proposal (1) that is accepted by your mentor and the elective director.

CONTENT:

1. To participate in an ongoing research project.
2. To carry out your own study. Your study should be very small so that it can be realistically finished in one month, or you should use data that have already been collected by a faculty member.
3. Meet with your mentor at least once per week during the month.

GOALS:

1. It would be wonderful if you publish a paper or an abstract as a result of this elective. More realistically, the minimum requirement is to summarize your month's work in an abstract (2,3) that meets your preceptor's approval. Your preceptor must receive this abstract within one month of your completing the elective. Your abstract, or a 'poster' version of it, will be displayed in the Division offices and the House Staff Office.
2. Present your research at UTHSCSA Research Day.
3. Present your research at the South Texas ACP Associates Program .

General references

Writing a proposal and general research methodology:

1. Hulley SB, Cummings SR. Designing Clinical Research. Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore 1988 [Chapter 17 and Appendix 1 describe research proposals. Consider using a simplified version of the example in Table 17.1 [p186 or p197] by starting with the section 'Specific objectives'].

Epidemiology:

2. Sackett, DL, Haynes RB, Guyatt GH, Tugwell P. Clinical Epidemiology: a basic science for clinical medicine, 2nd ed. Little, Brown, and Co. Boston, 1991.

3. Fletcher RH, Fletcher SW, Wagner EH. Clinical Epidemiology: the essentials, 3rd ed. Williams & Wilkins Baltimore, 1996.

Statistics:

4. Ingelfinger JA, Mosteller F, Thibodeay, LA, Ware JH. Biostatistics in Clinical Medicine., 2nd ed. MacMillan Publishing Company, New York: 1987.

Abstract writing:

5. Fletcher RH. Writing an abstract. J Gen Intern Med 1988;3:607-9.

6. Haynes RB, Mulrow CD, Huth EJ, Altman DG, Gardner MJ. More informative abstracts revisited. Ann Intern Med 1990;113:69-76 [The appendices to this article contain guidelines to writing an abstract].