Sorry. I realise that I hadn't put my contact details in this post. If you have an opinon on this topic and can spare up to an hour to talk to a student (and me) please contact me at: peirces@cardiff.ac.uk
Geoff, my request was not intended to generate debate or reams of text on this forum, but to identify people with relevant experience who would be willing to tell us their thoughts as research participants. I.e. to have an online interview where we ask them questions, to learn what they know about the questions we want to answer.
The primary purpose of these projects is for undergraduates to get experience of research methods and to develop their autonomy, planning and problem-solving skills. But they should be working on things that aren't already well-established in the literature. They should be trying to generate new 'knowledge' or at least expand it a bit. By which i mean established in the academic literature or in common knowledge amongst the population, not common knowledge amongst those in the profession.
Students can come up with their own topics, but usually academic staff are asked to generate a number of potential topics every year and the students choose several from the list. This topic was actually suggested by an NHS colleague who has worked in ITU and has a keen interest in medical ethics, but little knowledge of equipment management. The student might have some leeway to direct the project in a particular direction that interests them. This student was familiar with the idea of PPM in their industrial year, but not on medical equipment.
As someone working in the overlap between academic research and NHS medical physics/clinical engineering departments I've realised that things that we taken as 'given' in real-world clinical engineering come as revelations to those outside. Yes, these published forum discussions are a data source, but it is broad rather than rich. There's little context or detail in most posts. By interviewing participants we can delve more deelpy into their experiences and ensure that we have all the relevant context to understand their evidence. This type of qualitative research is valuable in collating knowledge and experience that belongs to one group (clinical engineers, people caring for demntia sufferers, people living with bowel cancer, etc) and giving it an evidence-based spotlight.
However, I can't tell you that the results generated by a 3rd year student will be published in a peer-reviewed journal or change any policies. Mostly people participate in such research because they think it's a good thing overall rather than because it might produce benefit. Also, I find people generally like talking about their work to people who are really interested in it.
Sue
