HTAi2012

It’s been a few weeks now since HTAi2012 in Bilbao, Spain. I went on a little holiday afterwards and it was a whirlwind trip. I am back at work now – back to winter – and back to reality. I arrived in Bilbao after a 30hrs or so flight from Melbourne. My luggage remained in Berlin for some reason and was delivered to the hotel the following evening. I had a meeting that afternoon so I had to rush out to buy some clothes (I will always think of that outfit as my emergency clothes). Thank goodness for hotel toiletries! I was so thankful that my luggage arrived when it did because I was leading a workshop on Sunday. We had a small audience but the program and audience participation was good. I was told by the organisers that there were only 2 breaks – a lunch and teabreak so the chair-elect and I worked out the workshop schedule around that. However, there was afternoon tea available so with last minute changes, we shortened the workshop so people could have afternoon tea and then go back to their hotel rooms to recharge for the busy days ahead.  The workshop materials are now available on the IRG section of the HTAi website. Monday was the day of the IRG lunchtime AGM, the first time that I have led one. Lunch was delivered to the room and we didn’t get through everything on the agenda because of food distractions. Next year we will try having lunch for 30mins and then have an hour for the AGM. Less time will mean more focus (hopefully). Monday night we had our annual dinner at El Kasko in the old part of town and quite a few IRG members attended. We booked the restuarant for 9.30pm (the HTAi AGM finished at 9pm so it gave people who attended time to get to the restaurant) but we waited outside until 10pm until we could get in and dinner started 30mins after that! We all had a good time though and there was lots of laughter and chat. We all finished up at midnight and walked back to our hotels. I had a 7.15am breakfast meeting the following morning which merged straight into the conference day. The conference dinner was at the Guggenhein that evening and finishing up at 7.30pm, Janney (the lady I shared a hotel room with) and I had some time to unwind before the open gallery session and conference dinner. The dinner was followed by a cocktail night at our hotel which went until 2am or so, but I didn’t stay for that because I had another breakfast meeting at 7.45am. In the next post, I’ll write about the sessions I attended and what I learnt along with take-home points.

CPD23 Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

I’ve just read Jo Alcock’s blog post about preparing for conferences and I must say, these points are excellent! Allow plenty of time for getting there and away (include explore your surroundings time), wear comfortable clothing, pack lightly and take business cards for networking (make your own if need be). I really like the DIY business card idea. I didn’t have any on me in Brisbane at the EBP Librarians workshop and it is my experience that events generally include a card swap. At Information Online, business cards are used for competition entries quite often, so that is another point to consider! 🙂 I’ve been to quite a lot of events since I attended my first conference in 2005 (document delivery in Canberra, held at the National Library of Australia). Cost is a consideration in deciding whether to attend an event, as well as the question of whether you can get time off work. I’ve paid for a few events myself and have taken annual leave in cases where there wasn’t a direct relation to my immediate job portfolio.  Then I claim it on tax as a work expense. I will be doing that this year when I attend HTAi2012 in Bilbao, Spain. I’ve only ever applied for one grant to attend a conference – Information Online 2011. I had given up on getting news about attending so I was really surprised to get news that I had got the grant (it was way after the early bird discount and close to the end of the registration period, so I had some scrambling to do). The only thing I had to do is write about my attendance for the local health libraries association journal.

As for speaking at events, I haven’t done much of that yet. It isn’t really a matter of being afraid of speaking in front of a large crowd – at times when I am relaxed, I enjoy it! I hate it when I am nervous and how it effects my voice. My first speaking gig was in 2006 when I was invited to speak at the HTAi Information Resources Group workshop in Adelaide. Since then, I’ve done bits here and there at small events and large. This year I will be doing some speaking at HTAi2012 and I hope I won’t be too nervous as it will be in front of people I respect and admire. Way to go – start thinking about it and getting nerves already! Death by powerpoint is a useful saying to remember – and there is a reason for it! I’ll never forget a conference presentation I went to where the speaker’s head was down and she read what was on the powerpoint slide – the ppt was very text heavy. It was terrible and I’ve remembered it for a long time. And thank you Wikiman for the hilarious Stop breaking the rules of presentation ppt! I laughed heartily. For more tips on presenting effectively, visit Peter Dhu’s website. He writes about controlling anxiety, the power of the pause and structuring your speech.

I’m having a go at taking the lead in organising an event for the first time. It is the HTAi Information Resources Group workshop that will be held later this year in Spain as part of the HTAi2012 conference. The Chair-Elect, who is in Canada, is assisting me with this and we also have a local medical librarian on hand who will help us organise the annual dinner as well as other things. The had of the local organising committee is also assisting us with answering questions about the organisation of the conference – rooms, lunch provisions, etc etc. I’ve been involved in helping organising the 2 previous workshops when I was Chair-Elect of our group. Traditionally, we put out a call for workshop presenters, send the proposals to a group for evaluation, write up a workshop proposal and submit it to the local organising committee. This year though, a descriptive abstract was wanted which we didn’t have on hand, so that has been a valuable lesson learnt (include an abstract as part of the submission). It was accepted though, phew! I’m to join an international teleconference middle of this week (11.30pm my time) as Chairs of all groups are part of the interational scientific program committee. This sure has been an illuminating experience. I encourage all medical librarians to present in the medical speciality of their organisation (of course, there may be many) – it is a different experience than just attending library-related events.

Evidence Week @ Royal Melbourne Hospital

The last week of November was Evidence Week at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (my place of work). I took part in some the planning for it and participated in 3 events: the EBP Workshop, the Study Errors lecture and the grand rounds session on using evidence in practice. Some of the presentations are available by clicking here. The first session I went to was the hour long lecture about study errors with presentations from Prof Paul Glasziou, A/Prof Peter Morely and Dr Danny Liew. A small number attended – perhaps the title of the lecture could have been more encompassing? The lecture is free to listen to by clicking on this link (the squeeking is Liew writing on the whiteboard!) . Anyway, here are some of my notes from this session:

• The errors most often encountered are Type 1 (false positive) and Type 2 (false negative) errors. Type 1 errors  can be demonstrated in a 2×2 table (see study error eg) with the real situation being the middle line between them. Type 2 errors occur when the study is underpowered.
• Errors can occur if a trial has a primary outcome but includes secondary outcomes that are also of interest
• A smaller effect needs a bigger sample while a bigger effect needs a smaller sample
• There is more chance of Type 1 error when there are multple analysis (hypotheses) being made using the same data. Eg: 1-0.05=.95 CI. Per analysis multiply the CI by how many analysis there are  -> 2nd analysis 0.95 x 0.95, 3rd analysis 0.95 x 0.95 x 0.95 etc
• Systematic reviews and meta-analysis are retrospective. Enhance these reports with preliminary data in trial registries
• Non-inferiority trials are not that useful because really, pharma want to prove that x drug is way better than y drug so …
• The best way to get safety info is to obtain post-marketing surveillance reports. Safety is not able to be tested in trials as trials are not long enough
• In surgery, the evidence evolves slowly over time
• You can’t control for all conditions in trials as there isn’t enough known about the human body

The following day I went to the EBP Workshop led by Prof Glasziou. I was to help with searching exercises but things didn’t work out. Like the EBP Residential Workshop the week after, the day was split into large group lectures and small group activities. This arrangement works very well with these type of workshops. I was very lucky to be in Glasziou’s group and there was an HTA colleague who also ended up in my group (he is into population health but hasn’t done much appraisal – and of course we talked about HTAi2012 …). There were a lot of librarians in the audience and the searching for lit was not extensive as we would like, but then it was a 1-dayer and there were other clinicians in the group who needed this background. However, I got something out of it because I had totally forgotten about the ability to add your own filters in My NCBI. The appraisals were interesting and the main point is – practice!! The more you do the easier it will be. There was a handbook given out as well:  Evidence-based Practice Workbook – Bridging the gap between health care research and practice. It covers asking an answerable question, searching (screen shots need updating – PubMed has changed it’s layout again!), appraisal and applying the evidence.

The final event was the Grand Rounds lecture. It was slightly different from Glasziou’s Cochrane Symposium lecture (July 2011) which was how GPs need evidence presented to them with instructions for integration. This was more about the amount of information available as opposed to evidence, what different specialities need in terms of research evidence, and thoughts in how to integrate new technologies/change practice.

Presentations from the EBP Workshop and the Grand Rounds lecture is available on the RMH Health Sciences Library website.