SURG 517: Clinical Research Methods for Surgical Procedures with Global Surgical Comparisons

This course is intended to introduce learners in surgical care to surgical clinical research methods and emphasize approaches to clinical research that are different for surgical research compared to medical research.

Credits: 3

Students will learn many aspects of the research process from research proposal development, to data analysis and statistical methods used in surgical research, to grant writing. This course will also provide an opportunity for students to learn about systematic reviews, quality improvement and assurance, and technology evaluation in surgical research.

Upon completion of this course, the learner will:

  • understand the challenges in doing surgical clinical research.
  • learn differences in the approaches for surgical research compared to medical research.
  • understand the importance of community engagement and the role of stakeholder involvement in surgical research.
  • demonstrate competence in developing a surgical research trial proposal.
  • distinguish different types of research approaches and justify when to use certain approaches to address a surgical research question.
  • become familiar with general ethical considerations in surgical research.
  • engage in self-reflection about one’s own social positioning relative to others in surgical research processes and the ethical implications.

What our students have to say:

“This course was very helpful in giving me an intuitive idea of how to understand writing in a real–world setting and was a good guide for possible future writing.

“The visiting/guest instructors for certain modules … were very engaged and interesting.”

[Instructor] “was an incredibly engaged instructor. They made time on a couple of occasions to discuss my project at length on Zoom, and provided insightful and thoughtful suggestions. They always responded promptly to emails and questions and provided excellent comments in the weekly online discussions. Their passion for research is evident and inspiring for learners! Thank you for a great course.”

“This course ends with providing a great skill in developing the proposal for researching an area of interest. This to me is so nice getting to know from the design to the implementation of the project.”

“Lots of great topics and resources through the various modules. Open and constructive conversation was thought provoking.”

“Very useful course, helped me to understand important aspects of research required to be able to critically appraise literature as well as contribute to literature myself.”

“The instructor was effective in delivering the comments and suggestions to the students especially in the discussion forums which were really helpful.”

“I appreciated that they took the time to have zoom calls with me and look over my work aside from assignments to give me constructive feedback.”

[The instructor was]”Very knowledgeable, very helpful. Always available and willing to support students. Really appreciated them as an instructor.”

“Really enjoyed the course overall, thought it was very valuable for this masters degree and felt I learned a lot going through the modules and readings.”