What medical research actually is

• Why we do research in medicine
• Difference between:
  • clinical experience
  • evidence
  • guidelines
• Why “one paper” is never enough

The big picture: types of medical research

• Observational vs interventional
• Primary vs secondary research
• Quantitative vs qualitative
• Where systematic reviews and meta-analyses fit – huge demand, huge confusion

Where everything starts: the research “questions”

• Why “interesting” ≠ “researchable”
• PICO (and when PICO doesn’t work)
• How bad questions create bad studies
• Turning clinical curiosity into a question

Basics of study design

• RCTs
• Cohort studies
• Case-control studies
• Cross-sectional studies
• Case reports & case series
• Strengths and limitations (honestly)

Learning to Read Research (yes, this is a thing)

• How to read a paper without drowning
• Understanding the anatomy of a paper
• Stats without fear (conceptual – let’s face it, most of us didn’t do math very well)
• Bias, confounding and casuality

Actually DOING the research

• From ideas to protocols
• Protocol writing
• Ethics in medical research – my apologies for being so unbearably boring, I wish things were different
• Data collection and management

Stats and Analysis – only as deep as necessary

you don’t need to be a statistician, but you need literacy

• Choosing the right analysis
• Softwares
• Analysis-paralysis

Advanced & Real-World Research Literacy

• Guidelines and evidence synthesis
• Industry, funding & conflicts of interest
• Reproducibility & research waste