Week 3: Navigating the Unpredictable – From Conference Chaos to Data Clarity
If you revisit my post from week 2, you’ll see that I laid out the in-depth steps of the data collection, with seeming straightforwardness, painting a picture that may appear too neat. However, the reality is that appearances can be deceiving, especially in research.
The first day of any course often carries a mild sense of chaos, dealing with last-minute issues, spontaneous questions, and unforeseen changes. While we typically are prepared and ready for the unexpected, this time around, we were presented with challenges that were out of our control, but we needed to work around them. For example, the most pressing issue was that the stock of handheld ultrasound devices was not present to the full amount as we had anticipated. Several devices from the different manufacturers were delayed or failed to arrive entirely! Luckily, we were able to see through the tunnel. We had to maximize all the resources that we already had available, using the faculty’s personal tablets and phones (including mine). On my end, all of this additional problem-solving required lots of back-and-forth communication and coordination.
As this course was busy at times, some of the oversight in the data collection process was lost, and I saw the effect of this during this week. This week was dedicated primarily to cleaning up the raw data from the REDCap system before we could move to data analysis. The majority of the data clean-up was all manual, meaning I had to individually scan and review 35-plus rows of numbers to make sure everything seemed to be consistent. Sometimes, the POCUS experts’ responses were duplicates, not clear, or entirely incomplete. As a result, I had to reach out and discuss with those experts to ensure the data was accurately recorded.
This coming week, I will be diving deeper and deeper into the data and the numbers as we begin the data analysis!
Tune back here to see the latest updates 🙂
-Riya