Student research projects

The MD Project is one of the foundations of the Charles Sturt University’s School of Rural Medicine (Charles Sturt University SRM) Doctor of Medicine (MD), a 5-year undergraduate entry medical program.

The aim of the MD Project is to expose medical students to research, develop their research skills and their ability to critically evaluate research outputs.

Scope

An MD Project must:

• answer an issue within your local Rural Clinical School (RCS)
• be scholarly work
• be proportionate in size and scope (larger projects can be shared by more than one student, each with a different question to address, or different clinical communities within which to address them)
• have clearly defined aims/objectives
• have clearly articulated and deliverable outcomes, or end-point measures
• have methods that address a scientific, educational, clinical, or community health related question
• may require Ethics approval.

Outcomes for our students

1. Be proficient users of research through being a doer of research (research training through experiential learning).
2. Have non-cognitive and cognitive skills for life-long careers:
   • time and project management, interdisciplinary teamwork and organisational know-how from working with supervisors, staff and services, scientific writing in professional genres and communication of evidence. These skills range from advanced information literacy and critical appraisal of evidence to dissemination of project findings in reports and presentations for professionals and lay audiences.
3. Respectfully engage with communities to design and conduct projects aimed at producing outcomes that will address community needs and be mutually beneficial (community includes consumer, client, patient, health professional, service provider and researcher communities).
4. Be able to articulate and reflect on learning outcomes from conducting the Projects that are relevant to graduate careers, such as adaptive problem solving, and
5. Be able to generate authentic assessment outputs in different formats, such as conference posters, oral presentation skills and writing for professional audiences such as abstracts.

Ethics

It is the responsibility of individual researchers, including students and their supervisors to ensure that their proposed research obtains all necessary Ethics approvals.

Projects that require ethics approval

• Medical research.
• Questionnaires, surveys and scales.
• Interviews.
• Observations.
• Physiological intervention or testing.
• Evaluation of classroom learning for research purposes.
• Clinical, laboratory testing or experimentation using human tissue.
• Analysis of existing datasets (not publicly available).

Projects that do not require ethics approval

Ethics approval is not required for research that uses publicly available information.

• Systematic review.
• Scoping review.

Project types

Health research-focused projects

A research project is a scientific endeavour that addresses a defined research question. Research is a systematic inquiry to describe, explain, explore, predict or control an observed phenomenon and to generate new concepts, understandings, methodologies and interventions.

Through research, students will gain a deeper understanding of a specific medical or biomedical area of health, while learning about appropriate study designs, research methods and tools, analyses and interpretations, either by creating new knowledge and/or by using existing knowledge in a new and creative way.

Medical education-focused projects

A project in medical education aims to achieve specific education-focused learning outcomes, and can involve patients or clients, students, alumni, instructors and other educational staff.

Students conducting medical educational projects can produce new knowledge in health education and gain career-long skills in curriculum development, use of new learning strategies, innovative technology in teaching and learning, and program evaluation.

Health service-learning focused projects

Service learning is experiential learning where students work with a service to learn about the needs of the service and/or its clientele, and corresponding local, regional, and/or national social problems.

A service-learning project provides enhanced opportunities for civic learning through cycles of action and reflection. Students will gain a deeper understanding of community issues and will use an academic and scholarly approach to achieve objectives that are relevant to the community.

Quality improvement projects

Quality improvement projects focus on identifying and implementing strategies to enhance the quality, safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of healthcare delivery. It involves systematically studying and analysing healthcare processes and outcomes with the goal of making measurable improvements.

Undertaking an audit is a good example of a QI project. It may involve analysing healthcare processes, identifying inefficiencies, errors, or areas with potential for improvement.

Data collection is essential for assessing the impact of interventions and determining whether goals are being met or guidelines followed. This may involve collecting quantitative data, such as patient outcomes or process metrics, as well as qualitative data, such as feedback from patients or healthcare providers.

MD Projects can be sourced in one of two ways. Students may source their own project in an area of interest, or they may select from projects offered by the CSU SRM - Research and Evaluation team.You may self-source your project by May of Year 3 in your subject areas of interest by contacting supervisors directly. Supervisors must be based within the medical community of the local rural clinical school you are based in for Year 3 – 5. You can contact the Research team to discuss proposed projects and next steps.

Each year the Research and Evaluation team seeks project offers across all six topic areas from within each Rural Clinical School. Approved projects will be listed for viewing from March 2024 and can be discussed with the Research and Evaluation team between March-June 2024.