Struggling with a paper or an idea? Workshop it with your SHaRe club peers.

Our next meeting is:

Friday November 13 from 12-1pm in SPPH Room 133.

Please RSVP to Sarah! See you next week.

At this next month’s SHaRe club session we will welcome a number of speakers who have successfully transitioned from their PhD, to a postdoc, and into faculty and research positions. Look forward to seeing you there!

Monday, July 6th, 4:00-5:30pm 

C2E2 at Vancouver General Hospital 

Room 700, 828 West 10th Avenue

For our next meeting on Monday March 9, we’ll discuss the concept of “patient burden” and this article by Carl May and colleagues, “Rethinking the patient: using Burden of Treatment Theory to understand the changing dynamics of illness.” From the article:

The aim of this paper is to rethink what it means to be a patient in the age of chronic multi-morbidity. We need to better understand the resources that patients draw upon as they respond to the demands of both burdens of illness and burdens of treatment, and the ways these resources interact with healthcare utilization.

This article makes me think of two related texts on the subject of the role of patients with chronic illness:

• Arthur Kleinman, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition 
• Annemarie Mol, The Logic of Care: Health and the Problem of Patient Choice

How does this new theory of patient burden build on existing works and theories that you’re familiar with?

We had a jam-packed 90 minute discussion of theory at the last SHaRe meeting. I’m posting here the articles that fuelled our conversation. If I’ve forgotten any, please add them in the comments below!

Imenda S. Is There a Conceptual Difference between Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks? J Soc Sci. 2014;38(2):185–95.

Andersen R, Newman JF. Societal and Individual Determinants of Medical Care Utilization in the United States. Milbank Quarterly. 2005 Dec 1;83(4).

Durand M-A, Stiel M, Boivin J, Elwyn G. Where is the theory? Evaluating the theoretical frameworks described in decision support technologies. Patient Education and Counseling. 2008 Apr 1;71(1):125–35.

Donabedian A. The quality of care: How can it be assessed? JAMA. 1988 Sep 23;260(12):1743–8.

Kitson AL, Rycroft-Malone J, Harvey G, McCormack B, Seers K, Titchen A. Evaluating the successful implementation of evidence into practice using the PARiHS framework: theoretical and practical challenges. Implementation Science. 2008 Jan 7;3(1):1.

Eccles M, Grimshaw J, Walker A, Johnston M, Pitts N. Changing the behavior of healthcare professionals: the use of theory in promoting the uptake of research findings. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. 2005 Feb;58(2):107–12.

Thank you to the six brave souls who endured a soggy commute to attend the second SHaRE club meeting. It was wonderful to learn about your backgrounds and current research. We brainstormed a number of topics for subsequent meetings. Our next gathering will be at the same time/place:

Following the group’s suggestions, our December meeting will cover two questions:

1. What is a theoretical framework?
   • Bring ideas, articles, and examples to share with the group.
2. What is value in health care?
   • Re-read the article by Porter for discussion.

For our January meeting we’ll have a mock thesis screening panel. If you have a research proposal or analysis plan that you’re currently drafting, you can take 10 minutes to present it to the group for feedback.

For our next session on Monday November 3rd, our meeting will consist of peer review of someone’s work in progress (seeking volunteers!) and discussion of the following editorial, “What Is Value in Health Care?” (N Engl J Med 2010). Here’s a snippet:

Value — neither an abstract ideal nor a code word for cost reduction — should define the framework for performance improvement in health care. Rigorous, disciplined measurement and improvement of value is the best way to drive system progress. Yet value in health care remains largely unmeasured and misunderstood.

I hope we can discuss Porter’s conceptualization of “value.” Do you agree with the commenters who argue that a payer-centred perspective of value ignores patient-centred, lifespan, and non-acute care outcomes? How does this editorial relate to other HSR literature you’ve been reading recently?