MCL Blog
Welcome to the blog of the medical cultures lab (MCL), a community of scholars who work to understand the culture of medicine and advance health equity.
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In early 2024, my mentor, MCL PI Alissa B Sideman, led the interviews of our research project, “Family physicians’ perspectives on important outcomes and policies when caring for people with dementia.” The research included 20 semi-structured interviews and a…
Since I joined MCL last year, I’ve identified an interest in learning more about social interventions for older adults and their support networks. Through a career in research, I hope to contribute to long-term health care and supportive services available to older adults…
Occasionally, MCL members receive requests for advice on qualitative and mixed methods studies. Here we will occasionally provide guidance from these conversations.~~~Recently, a clinician investigator came to us to ask about what to do now that they were a few interviews into…
The concept of saturation plays an essential role in qualitative scholarship, and we may ask too much of it. Metaphorically, saturation occurs when a project or an investigator is soaked through with insights about their focus of inquiry—an experience that occurs repeatedly in…
Brandi Ginn grew up in a small town on the East Coast that is two and a half hours from the nearest metropolitan city. Growing up, she watched her large extended family cope with aging, and for some, Alzheimer’s disease. She observed and accepted all she saw as part of life.As…
Image: A Silicone Cage, generated with DALL.E2Artificial intelligence – AI – is the buzzword of 2023. The term refers to computer systems that learn to perform tasks previously requiring human judgement.AI conjures varied imagery: sentient machines from sci-fi who use…
I’ve been fortunate to participate in a number of studies that engage community members. In some studies, community members have provided light consultation. In other studies, there has been a deep collaboration between researchers and community members who guide the project.…
Whose voice is part of community engagement? How do you ensure patients who are marginalized are heard? And who makes the decisions about what is shared with patients?Jen James, PhD, centers these questions in her research on the intersection of race, gender and health in the…
Scientists like numbers. Words and narrative can help illustrate or describe research results, but scientists typically expect trustworthy results to take a numeric form. Well-trained researchers recognize that quantification does not assure unbiased objectivity. Nevertheless, in…
Three cheers for NIH’s enshrinement of rigor and reproducibility (R&R) as principles of research quality. First, who doesn’t love a little alliteration? Second, like all good poetry, R&R are terse, thorough and thought-provoking. Third, R&R have proved…