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Researcher or Clinician- The tensions and triumphs
Being a researcher and an occupational therapy clinician means I have to be reflexive all the time. I am currently part of a research project called Digital Storytelling and Dementia, and I am enjoying the process of meeting participants, hearing their stories and working together to create digital stories. I met with a participant this morning who asked me, a little unexpectedly, “So why are you doing this?” I paused for a moment. I wasn’t sure if he was asking me why I was meeting with him specifically, or why I was doing this research. I smiled and said that I could see the potential benefits of digital storytelling for people with dementia and I wanted to understand better and hopefully use this knowledge to improve lives. He did clarify his question by saying, “I know what I am getting out of this, but I guess I just don’t see what you get out of it!”
As a clinician, I look at the therapeutic value of research,- not as the purpose, but rather as a potential side benefit. I meet with participants and interact with them as I would clients in a clinical setting. In occupational therapy, there is an emphasis on the therapeutic relationship. In research, there is also a relationship that forms between the participant and the researcher. Although some researchers would not consider this relationship as part of the research, I am unable to make this separation.
As a researcher, I would say that I am a narrative inquirer because I think that research happens in relationships, and that these relationships develop through stories. Stories are shared between individuals based on past experiences, but their interactions also become stories themselves. The experiential knowledge that comes from stories contribute to our understanding of others and the world around us.
The digital stories created by people with dementia are powerful and provocative. The use of media enhances the experience of hearing and seeing the story unfold. Yet, for me, the meaning comes from the process that we went through when creating this story. Having conversations, laughing, talking about the past and present, helped us form a bond that the story grew out of. The gentleman I met today knew me by name- even though he has short term memory loss and has difficulty remembering people since he was diagnosed with dementia. I was touched when he opened the door and said my name. Thinking about the time we have shared and the relationship that has formed, I am confident that it is therapeutic. I can be a researcher and a clinician… who knew?

Source: Elly_Park_Research – RSS

Digital Storytelling and Dementia

Digital storytelling uses media technology including photos, sound, music, and videos to create a story that can be preserved and shared with others. Past research has found benefits of storytelling for people with dementia including enhanced relationships and communication. The purpose of this research is to explore and understand digital storytelling as experienced by the storytellers – people with dementia. Using a case study design, the study was conducted in Edmonton and Vancouver and is being conducted in Toronto. The study included an 8-session workshop, where eight participants at each site created digital stories with the help of researchers and care-partners. Participants then discussed the experience of sharing and using digital media to create digital stories. Lastly, there was an opportunity to share their stories with loved ones and the public. In this study, audio-recorded interview transcripts and field notes are analyzed using NVivo 11 software. 

For more information, please stay tuned. I will be writing another blog with findings in the coming months!

Source: Elly_Park_Research – RSS

Who I am and what I do

Short biography

I am an occupational therapist (University Universidad National de Colombia) with a MSc degree in Biomedical Sciences (University de los Andes, Colombia) and a PhD in Rehabilitation Science (University of Alberta in Canada). Currently I am doing a PDF on a project at the network Age-well at the University of Alberta. I am also an adjunct associate professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. My research interests are focused on how assistive technologies allow people with disabilities to increase their levels of functioning, capacity and participation.

Researchgate

My research interests

My research project is addressing the research question: What technology-based systems and services should be used to meet older adults and caregivers needs? The project is focused helping older adults to maintain and improve cognitive level through serious games and digital story telling. I am also interesting on investigating the impact of these technologies on social the social engagement, communication and cognitive skills and quality of life of older adults and their caregivers.

I am interesting also in finding clinical evidence about how technologies for preventing falls and wandering improve functional outcomes.

Who I am willing to collaborate with

As an occupational therapist, my boundaries are the evaluation and intervention on occupational performance in order to improve functional outcomes and social participation in elderly. The current project push me to understand the reasoning of other areas such as computer science, engineering, social sciences, behavioral sciences, and management. My research group already have strong interdisciplinary team work between computer science, engineering and rehabilitation medicine. I am interested in learning about the development of serious games for people with dementia and healthy elders.

Source: AdriAgeWell – RSS

Use it or lose it? This is the question 

There are thousands of mobile apps available through online app markets that claim to help people enhance their mental and physical health. They can be widely used for many purposes. You may use them to monitor your health measures (such as blood sugar levels, heart rate, and blood pressure), track behavior and activities, or use apps that suggest you a healthy daily diet. The number of these health related apps are increasing so rapidly that it is almost impossible to keep a track of them. Their use are becoming more and more popular among all age groups. The problem is, despite their popularity and abundance, health mobile apps are poorly regulated and not much is known about their quality and effectiveness. As a matter of fact, there are not any standards on the quality of a health related mobile application or what is the best way to identify a good app form a bad one. Most health related apps do not meet the criteria set for medical devices, hence they are not obliged to seek any approvals from Health Canada, which is the regulatory body for drugs and health products in Canada.

Users may easily get confused by the abundance and diversity of health related apps available on the market. Some may ask their family physician or other healthcare professionals to help them choose the right app for their need. Since there are no guidelines for health care providers to rate the quality of mobile apps, they are not able to provide an evidence based recommendation.

In recent years, as a response to the demand for identifying reliable health mobile apps, several websites have started to publish ratings on popular health related apps. Most of them use ratings based on evaluations made by family physicians or other health care professionals. Examples are Practicalapps.ca , or the Addiction and Mental Health Mobile Application Directory 2016. This is a very good start to enable users make an informed decision when it comes to choosing a health related app. However, it is not clear that how these ratings have been provided. Most of these website do not publish the criteria used for their ratings or the process that they have used in order to rate the quality of these apps. Further, with the fast and ever growing number of apps on the market, it is very difficult for the administrators of the websites to keep the information up-to-date.

Our research team at University of Alberta has proposed a different solution. Instead of ratings each and every app available and publishing the results on an online directory, we propose a quality rating scale that enables health care providers evaluate the quality of any health related app themselves. This way, instead of “giving a man a fish and feeding him for the day”, we will “teach him fishing and give him a lifetime career”. Currently our focus is on mental health apps and our population of interest is senior citizens. However, we are planning to expand this project to other health related apps and include other age groups in future. The proposed rating scale can serve as a guiding reference for clinicians to identify apps that are useful and usable for their clients. Further, the scale can be used as a guiding framework for app developers to design better apps that are more usable by different users.

To do this, we will engage stakeholders such as senior citizens, app developers, and clinicians in the process of design and development of the proposed rating scale. The study protocol has been approved by the University of Alberta Research Ethics Board and we are ready to start recruiting participants for the study. If you are interested to learn more about this study feel free to contact me at azadkhan@ualberta.ca. Perhaps you can sit at one of the stakeholder committees and provide us input on items that you believe should be on a scale to rate the quality of health related apps.
Source: Peyman Azad Research Blog – RSS