Welcome to Epi 202! You’re embarking on a well-trodden path towards a successful career in clinical research. This course and the book we use are internationally recognized standards in the field. The course has been running continuously for over 30 years, and it’s been carefully crafted and honed over the years...I took it myself in 2001! We’re looking forward to sharing it with you, and to seeing you at our first session on July 26th.
Here are some things to do in the next 3 weeks BEFORE the first day of class:
1) Get the book – Designing Clinical Research, 4th Edition (an earlier edition is OK). You can order it from Amazon here. This will be required reading for the course…and it’s a great book, you’ll be glad to own it.
2) Meet with your mentor. It’s very important to have a mentor who can help you decide on a good research question and give you advice about your project. Find someone if you don’t have someone already, and meet with them to discuss possible research questions.
3) Choose a research question. We’re going to spend the Summer designing a study to answer that question, so choose one that is interesting to you and hasn’t been answered before! To make sure about that, you’ll have to...
4) Do a literature search. Search PubMed for prior publications related to your research question, do some reading, and start gathering the important literature in a citation management tool like Endnote – you’ll use this for Assignment 1. The UCSF Library provides information about different Citation Management Software here (including training courses like this one). Endnote also provides an online tutorial.
5) Repeat Steps 2, 3 and/or 4 as needed. It’s hard to find a perfect answerable research question that has not yet been answered. As you do your literature search, look for the gaps in the current evidence that you might be able to fill, and jot those down too – you might end up using them later.
6) Do Assignment 1 and bring a paper copy to class. You can find it in the syllabus.
7) Look for additional emails. We’ll be sending some additional emails in the coming weeks with instructions on how to use the course syllabus, section assignments and other logistical details.
See you soon!