Clinical Research: It’s Time to Get Involved!

Dear Readers,   Have you ever had a question about a patient’s disease or the use a particular wound care product? Have you ever had an idea for treating a patient that you thought should work better than what you are currently using? If so, it is time for you to get involved with clinical research. Before you say, “There is no way I could ever do any research,” think about it. Research is defined as “a systematic inquiry into a subject in order to discover or revise facts or theories.”¹ Clinical is defined as “pertaining to or founded on actual observation and treatment of patients.”² That means clinical research is to look at a problem or question systematically by observing or treating patients in order to discover or revise facts or theories. You do that every day as you treat patients! You look at a problem (the wound) as you treat your patient to discover if the treatment is working or not. You don’t have to be holed up in a dusty laboratory hovering over test tubes and analyzing machines to do clinical research. Dr. Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid Land Camera, said, “The process of research is continuing to compare the way things are…with the way you think they work. You usually find that the things are not exactly the way you think they are.” That is the fun and benefit of clinical research—finding that things are not exactly the way you think or the way you have been told.   All you have to do is to ask a question and then try to determine the answer. Don’t be intimidated when choosing the question to ask. Start with an easy one. The path to answering your question follows some simple steps. First, you learn all you can about the subject. By doing this you will determine if someone else has already asked the question and found the answer. You may also find that someone has already found a simple way to answer your question. This makes your task even easier. Second, decide how you want to approach the question to get a reliable, reproducible answer. Do you want to observe what happens to a group of patients you treat or do you want to devise a unique approach to finding the answer to your question? Let your imagination work overtime at this point in the process. Dr. Land, one of the great question askers of our time, said, “The journey to the preferred solution may reveal many alternate ways of doing things.” There is no one correct way to solve a problem. It could be that your “unusual” approach to answering a question might be more important that the answer to the question. The next step is to be sure the equipment needed to answer the question is readily available and affordable. Answering questions in wound care does not necessarily require expensive, complicated equipment. One of our current questions involves the effect of the pH of the wound on healing with certain wound care products. All the equipment that is involved is pH paper, which is very cheap and available.   Next, you must decide the patient population you will be evaluating. There are many ways to select the patients who will help answer your question. At this point I would refer you to your local institutional review board (IRB) or committee. The IRB is an invaluable resource to be sure you can ask your question in an appropriate manner and will get a reasonable answer. Most importantly, the IRB will guide you to get your answers without endangering patients in any way.   After everything is in place, the fun begins. You are able to collect and evaluate your data to find the answer to your question. The answer may be what was expected or it may be entirely unsuspected, but that is the fun of asking the question. Once you have your answer, I encourage you to share your findings. Presenting your information at meetings via posters or presentations is a good way to get started. Creating a manuscript for publication is a great way to share with all of us. I assure you that there are many resources to help you every step of the way.   Clinical research, from asking a simple question to the most complicated research protocol, is how we learn from our patients so that we can advance our knowledge of wound care. Without it we would not have the important answers about wounds that will allow us to provide better care for patients in the future. What question have you been wanting to ask? 1. Urdang L, Flexner SB, eds. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language. New York, NY: Random House; 1968:1122. 2. Agnew LRC, Avido DM, Brody JI, et al, eds. Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary. 24th ed. Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders Company; 1965:315.