So, welcome to this episode of the Thought Broadcast, where we aim to demystify the scholarly project and humanize the research experience. So far on the Thought Broadcast, we've covered a number of topics and we feel that we've done a pretty comprehensive job of discussing differences in the ways that you can approach the scholarly project. So, in today's episode, what we were hoping to do was to have a brief discussion outlining some of the key points that we've learned so far as a way of summarising what we know and providing a bit of a roadmap for trainees completing a scholarly project in the future. So today we're joined by our deputy editor Andrew Amos. How are you, Andy?

I'm fantastic. Oli, how are you going?

Good, good, thank you. And our trainee editors, Michael Waiteman and Brian Bowie. Welcome, Michael.

Hi Olly. Happy to be here.

And g'day Brian, how are you going? Good thanks, Ollie. Great to be here. I suppose one of the first things that came up regarding the Scholarly projects is when should you start your project? We have entitled one of our episodes, Start Early, a discussion with Jeremy Cooper, which I think gives a pretty clear indication that you should get started pretty soon. But on that point, I'd like to hand over to the team of Andy, Brian, and Michael to sort of discuss when we should be just starting our scholarly projects. Michael, have you got any thoughts on that?

Well, it's an interesting one, Ollie, because it really seems like it's a bit of a choose your own adventure. All the trainees that we've spoken to have had quite different experiences, and there's no, I suppose, one correct way of doing it. But in general, I think having a bit of a plan about how to do all the summative assessment tasks from the start of training is good, and and having at least a plan for where the scholarly project's going to fit in is important. And Jeremy talked quite a lot about how it always takes longer than expected, and particularly if you're going through ethics and if you're doing the audit with the review cycle and all those kind of things to really make sure that there's enough time to get it all done.

It seems as if one of the things that came up with Jeremy was that different studies take sort of different amounts of time. And I suppose if someone was trying to choose, say, original research over a review, you might be eager to start things even earlier or sort of be thinking about that more proactively. Brian, you your your research for your scholar project was an original paper. Can you comment on sort of how long maybe things took and were there any delays?

Yeah, definitely. And I agree with Michael. I think people should try to start the project as early as you can because if you go through the ethics and things that there are a lot of passive waiting time, so you might as well just want to get it as as early as you can. Because we did a retrospective research, so the ethic was relatively quick because it was deemed as a minimal risk research. So I think for people who are a bit anxious about the ethic, I could definitely go a retrospective would be a bit faster. And I remember Sonia spoke about her previous research in last episode as well. Doing the scholar project while she was studying for the MCQ really helped with the critical abrace of part. So I definitely agree that we should start as early as we can with the Scholar project.

It's interesting we haven't had a chance to speak to anyone yet who's done a quality assurance project or clinical audit, um, which seems to be uh yeah, I think Jeremy was saying that often is a process that does take a lot longer. Um, and it'll be interesting to see how easy that is to fit into um into the time in training. If if um any trainees have done that, we'd love to hear that experience. Please get in touch with the the show. But most of the people seem to be doing either um literature reviews or original research.

Michael, that's something I see as a director of training. The quality uh assurance projects um are really very popular with the service, and it will often be uh an idea that you have while you're doing your regular work that then leads on to something that will directly improve the service. So that can actually be quite good for you in your career. Um there are quite a few doctors where I am in Townsville who are trained overseas, particularly in the UK, and they have a very big audit culture over there. So I think if you're part of a service that does emphasize that, then the quality assurance project becomes much more viable. You get a lot more support, and there are people who know how to do it. And in those circumstances, you can often do it within a year to 18 months, depending on what sort of thing you're doing and how many times you go through the feedback cycle. Um, I I'd I'd reinforce what uh um Brian and Michael have said as well about starting early, but but one of the key factors which I think has come out of the podcast we've already done is you need to be fairly passionate about the project that you're doing to keep it interesting because it's quite a long and drawn-out process. And I think each of the people we've spoken to have shown that they had an idea as part of their working lives. It was a question that they wanted to ask in most cases about how the service was working or other aspects of the job, and there were people around them that provided some support who were also interested in answering that question. So I think as as important as it is to start early, it's also really important to pick something that you're actually really interested in. That also then leads into your preparation for those other aspects of mandatory assessment because uh you'll you'll do a deep dive into the topic that you're looking at, that will then really help you with your preparation. So I think there's a lot of reinforcing elements. If you start early, if you have an idea that you're interested in, and if you have support from the people in your service and those around you. Um, the final thing that I'd emphasize is uh it is important to perhaps reach out to people who have expertise in the area that you're looking at. That may be someone local, it may be someone a little bit further afield. Most of the sites that I've been involved with have had associations with universities, and so it's it's usually possible to reach out to academics who have some sort of background in the area that you're looking at, and they can be very, very helpful for both things like ethics, but then also the the literature review part of your project.

And on that last point, Andy, Malcolm Forbes, one of our guests, talked a fair bit about that as well, about how he was able to reach out to some quite senior researchers and get a lot of support um with his literature review. And I think that was quite good advice that that he gave that echoed what you just described as well.

I I love the fact that uh after we interviewed Malcolm, he then appeared on the website um receiving some award for his research uh on the RNZP website, which I thought was serendipitous.

I think Andy, you touched on a really interesting point about sort of finding a topic um and it happening organically. And I suppose I can sort of, if I'm putting myself in the in the shoes of a trainee, you could sort of start to feel a bit of anxiety, like, how am I gonna find this mystical thing that's just gonna appear out of my clinical interactions and this you know, important question I need to answer? How do I find that? If I'm trying to force it, is it not gonna work? And does it need to just fall into my lap? Like, um, I mean, we've heard a few different people come up with ways that they've they've come to that sort of um uh you know conclusion about what they're gonna go for. Um, but does anyone have any have any words of wisdom there or is it just something that has to happen?

I don't I don't know about wisdom. I think the best approach is when you're doing your assessments, when you're doing your clinical work, you're always gonna come up with further questions that you don't know the answer to that you would like to investigate. As scientists practitioners, we're then expected to go and look at the literature and see if there are answers, but often the answers will not exactly match what we're going to do. And therefore, when you have that question, um you you look for the answers. If you can't find the answers, then you have a topic that could be researched. There have been a few really good audit um projects in Townsville, North Queensland, that um I might mention sort of along these lines. It's often really obvious stuff, things like um the um the impact of clozapine. It's something that has a really big positive impact in terms of reducing symptoms, but can have some very big negative impacts in terms of metabolic syndrome and so on. So a couple of our registrars has looked at even the basics of are we doing uh weight measurements and all of the other things you need to do to monitor for the onset of metabolic syndrome? And then the next step, what is it that we do when we determine that someone who's taking clozepine is starting to develop some issues in those areas? And we've had some very good um connections between the quality project and then implementing changes. So not only are we looking for things, we're then following up and improving patients' lives. So I think that's a really nice way of looking at it. The final thing that I would say in the terms of finding a project is read the literature of the um Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry and Australian Psychiatry, and particularly the editorials at the beginning of the journal. If you read those in every issue, it's a nice summary of what's on the minds of some fairly prominent psychiatrists, things that are hot in the literature. Often they will say, These are the things we know, these are the things we don't know, and the things that we don't know then can form uh questions that you would then go and look at a uh literature review or trying to do your own research. They're also really good for being prepared for your uh essay exams. The OSCI, I guess, is less of an issue at the moment, the alternative pathway, but they keep you current with what's important in uh psychiatry in Australia and New Zealand and uh can be a rich source of the material that you would need for your scholarly project as well.

Um Australasan psychiatry publishes a lot of trainee research and often tags it as scholarly project as well. So it is easy to flick back through past um volumes of the journal and to see um what other trainees have done, which can be a good um a good yardstick to work out what um someone might choose to do for their own project.

That's a really good thing to do at journal clubs and similar sorts of local education sessions. Follow-up questions on things that the uh paper being presented hasn't answered, but you would like to know.

Um, and I think that's a really good advice, Andy. I think uh other ways that someone might be able to do it is just to ask questions about it for the people who was more senior in their in their service. Because I can, you know, as a as an early trainer, I didn't have a lot of questions, I didn't know enough to even ask questions. But you know, uh for people who are more senior than me at that time, you know, there were definitely a lot of people who have things they want to find out, or just like like Andy said, there are all that that the service is really keen to get done. So even if you don't, if you can't come up with questions yourself, ask around. There will be some someone out there to have a lot of questions or you know, have things that need to be done that you can just put a work in it to do it if you find interesting enough.

There was um a point, another point made by uh Jeremy Cooper in his episode about uh literature reviews being a good way to get your scholarly project done, if say you were running out of time. And while you know we want to make sure there's a lot of variety and things within the scholarly projects that are being produced, um I'm sure there's a number of trainees out there who might be in their third, fourth, or even fifth year who still need to be completing their project. Um I think his term was if you can burn the midnight oil, you could get it done in two to three weeks. Um, that would be a big effort, but um not impossible. Uh, does anyone have any thoughts on the literature review as an option?

It is the most accessible of all the options for the reasons you said there, Ollie. Um that yeah, you you don't need to have the extra steps of recruiting patients, going through ethics, um, following up, you can get it done in a circumscribed time. And I suppose the key things are making sure the question you're asking is not too broad, so you're not having to review thousands of papers, um, choosing a question that's you know got enough literature to um to find something and and and it could be done in a reasonable time frame. So that would definitely be the option for people who are um have time pressure.

I I think as much as the literal review is a is a quick way to do it, I think there's also you know the pitfall that people should avoid. Um I haven't done it myself for the Square project, but I have no of my colleagues who've done literal review but then uh get rejected or get failed because uh the project that they produced was not deemed as um appropriate or as uh comprehensive.

Yeah, I think what you just said there, Brian, raises a couple of points um around getting your project through. Uh the first being that it needs to have um the scope required, uh, which I think becomes more of an issue if you decide to go down the route of publication and then seeking an exemption. Um, in many cases, if you're publishing in a journal, you might be restricted in your word limit to 1500, 2,000, 2,500 words, and yet um the scholarly project's word limit is uh up around 5,000. So you need to maybe provide supplementary materials or um other features to ensure that you're um demonstrating the scope of the project. Uh so I think that yeah, that sort of raises that issue of the exemption pathway, which comes at some risk to the trainee who uh tried decides to go down that. Um, although as Malcolm did point out, it is cheaper. So I suppose it does um save you some money if you feel like you want to go down that route. Um what I thought was really interesting uh that Jeremy Cooper raised was if you don't go down the route of exemption and you are um providing a proposal to the college, um, there's always opportunity to go back to the to the committee and ask them um for advice or to uh update your project plans. Because as we know, things tend to change and you encounter challenges. Um, and his advice was strongly that if you're encountering challenges during your project, keep communicating with the community because then they can help you to um guide or shape your project in a direction that you can assure that it will be passed. Um, and he was outlining that one of the frustrating things is that when you uh have a project proposal, and then six months or a year or two years later, the final project looks nothing like the proposal that came in the first instance, um, they have no choice but to fail that project because it's not what the person had said they were going to do. Um so just to keep that line of communication open, I think is important.

Uh I might I might uh add it just as a final point on literature reviews. Um, one one issue that people have struggled with is when you're doing a literature review as part of a larger project, you really need to demonstrate that you have had an input into all of the facets of the research. You can do that if let's say you're on a published paper where somebody else is the first author, you can do that with a letter from the first author demonstrating what your contributions have been. You can also do the supplementary material type approach where you have a more extensive literature review as part of your uh side to the project, if you like. So there are a number of ways of going about it. One of the advantages of being part of a larger project is you do get that support from a more senior researcher. Often they'll have resources, they'll have been through the ethics process and those sorts of things. So being open to um different opportunities in your area is probably going to be the best way to find out what's happening and how you can be involved.

I suppose another issue uh that's common to everyone doing the scholarly project will be the idea that it would be advisable to have a supervisor and it would be advisable to have a supervisor who has experience doing the type of study in which you are sort of embarking on. Um it's not always the case. Some people seem to manage without one, um, or doing it a little bit more piecemeal, getting advice from different people at different points in time. However, uh seeking a supervisor who's done a number of papers that, or types of papers that you um are looking to uh produce is probably um the best course of action. I think the person who we spoke to who stressed that the most strongly was Malcolm Forbes. Um, but it was a sort of theme that seemed to come out of most of the episodes.

Well, I think Malcolm was a good example that uh you you go for what you want, so you identify the people that uh might be interested and just ask. You may get a few rejections, but eventually you will find someone that's going to support you.

I suppose one thing I'm thinking is if you were to start a project and things were to go well for you know three to six months or whatever, and then you were to hit some kind of roadblock or disaster and things were really going to crumble and they weren't seeming to progress. Um I'm I'm sure that there's been plenty of people in that position. Have we got any advice as a team about what people can do? Um who can they turn to, what can they do to kind of push through major challenges?

I guess that's the role of the supervisor, first and foremost, is if you've you know you've got um a team around you who you can approach, who have the expertise, then hopefully they'll be able to help work through some of those issues or direct you to other avenues if if they're not able to. So I think that's probably um the first port of call, and I guess it underlines the importance of finding good supervision um to start off with with the project. Um, but as well, I think speaking to senior trainees who have submitted their own scholarly project, who have done similar kinds of things, who've got experience. Um suppose talking to others who've gone through the process as well can be really helpful.

Um I think one point that we should probably emphasize is you know, try not to have it happen if possible. So I think you know, writing a really good proposal and writing a really good research protocol, most of the time, if you're able to do these two things well, you tend to avoid a lot of the problem kind of midway through the project because if you write a really good protocol, you're a it you you probably should be able to see the scale of the project and how feasible it is for you to do. So if you do a protocol and you're thinking it's really big, you probably should reconsider or try to get more help.

Yeah, yeah, great point. And um, you know, people people can sort of make it what they want to, and and I suppose part of the part of the intention, um, and I'm sort of paraphrasing from Jeremy Cooper's episode is that you're not only is the college hoping for us to get some academic experience, but they're hoping that we can enjoy and have fun doing some research as well. So I think picking a project that is going to suit yourself and getting it done in a way that suits your training and and your life is probably the most important thing. Um, and there is many, many different ways to pass. Um you don't have to sort of um you know do it only one way. So that's it. Yeah, great point, Brian. Um, does anyone else have any final points?

Oh, again, at risk of repeating things, I think absolutely the point of finding a topic you enjoy and are passion about will make the process so much easier if you start researching something that you find tedious or you don't really care about, it just makes it 10 times harder. So follow your passions.

Yeah, great. And as as mentioned earlier, um encourage everyone to read Australasian psychiatry. There's plenty of scholarly projects published in the pages of the journals, and they are a really good blueprint for how you can go about um achieving a scholarly project success of your own. And then also going back and listening to uh as many episodes of the Thought Broadcast as you can. Um we hope that it's a really good resource. Uh I don't think there's anywhere else where the chair of the Scholarly Project Committee is talking for two hours on the on the topic, um, and it really is a must-listen for anyone who's uh looking to complete their project. So I'd love to thank the team, Andy, Brian, and Michael. Thanks for the support today and uh sharing your thoughts over the last uh 12 months with everybody listening to the Thought Broadcast.

Thanks, Ali. It's been great. Thanks, Ali. Thanks, Ali, it's been a pleasure.

Uh and we'd also like to thank Joe Rose and Nishta for their help in um production today from the INZCP. Um we would like to thank uh Shady Dave for our music and Sidoni Prentice for our artwork. Uh, and look out for more exciting things coming from the Thought Broadcast in the future!