Project Title: Implementing Point-of-Care Medical Information Systems in Lima, Peru
Background
Recently, we had the opportunity provide research consulting and manuscript writing services to a team of surgeons and researchers located in the United States and Peru on an implementation science project.
Our involvement with the project began when a sociology colleague of mine at University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus contacted us regarding a surgeon who needed assistance with qualitative methods. The project was focused on global health inequalities and part of a study funded through National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center. The surgeon, who was also the primary investigator (PI) on the project, was mentoring a Global Health Fellow. For the study, the fellow conducted a randomized control trial to assess the implementation process of point-of-care medical information systems across hospitals in Lima, Peru.
In addition to the randomized control trial, which culminated in quantitative data, the project also included post-intervention interviews with surgeons who participated in the trial. The interview data had been collected, transcribed, and coded, and our task as qualitative research experts was to synthesize the data analysis and prepare a manuscript for submission in a peer-reviewed implementation science journal.
Project Goals
From the get-go, the main goal of the project was to produce a publishable manuscript. The manuscript would be based on data from post-intervention interviews with Peruvian surgeons that spoke to the implementation science literature.
As always, our goals as a consultants on this project were to exceed the expectations of the client and provide a sociologically-informed deliverable. That meant we set out to not only produce a publishable manuscript, but also see the manuscript through to publication.
Length of Project
Seeing the manuscript through to publication meant the length of our working relationship with this client extended beyond the single deliverable of a manuscript. While the work on this project began in April 2022, we continued to work as needed on the project until it was accepted for publication in early 2023.
With that said, the bulk of the work on this project occurred across three months. During that time, we familiarized ourselves with the implementation science literature, analyzed the interviews and associated code reports, and drafted and revised the manuscript based on collaborator’s feedback.
Associated Tasks
To achieve the goal of publication for our client, we began with crafting a workback schedule to provide a timeline for tasks leading up to the initial submission of the manuscript. The workback schedule was based on a reasonable agreed-upon deadline for our initial submission of the manuscript and the time it would take to complete the following specific tasks:
- Draft Introduction
- Draft Background & Methods
- Collaborators Review Background & Methods
- Data Analysis and Synthesis
- First Draft (Full Paper)
- Collaborators Review First Draft
- Second Draft
- Collaborators Review Second Draft
- Third Draft
- Collaborators Review Third Draft
- Fourth Draft
- Collaborators Review Fourth Draft
- PI Reviews Final Manuscript Draft
- Submit Manuscript
Project Deliverables
In the end, we submitted the manuscript to the target journal, Implementation Science Communications, and within a few months received the opportunity to revise and resubmit the full length manuscript as a short report. Upon resubmission of the manuscript, the short report was accepted for publication in early 2023.
You can access the full report here: Implementing point-of-care medical information systems into trauma and general surgeon practice in a middle-income country: a qualitative study utilizing the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research
Inside the Sociology
We like to end each project report with a brief reflection on how sociology enabled the successful completion of the project. For this particular project, the most obvious use of sociological skills was conducting qualitative analysis of interview data. Less obvious might be the fact that we were able to use what we know about organizational culture to analyze the implementation process discussed in the interviews. So, while we did not bring any particular sociological theories or frameworks into this project, we did bring general sociological assumptions about culture and how it operates within organizations (e.g., hospitals) to the analysis. As a project focused on global health inequalities, we were also able to tap into our sociological knowledge on health disparities.
Working on this project allowed us to showcase our skills as both a sociological researchers and writers—two things we are always enthusiastic to do!
