In this episode, Ian revisits the notion of number needed to treat (NNT) and absolute risk ratio (ARR) from a few episodes ago, in light of some new claims made about mAb therapies for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, given some of the public support for their early use. As always, the approach taken is a methodological one, and the focus is not on COVID-19 per se.

In this episode, Ian speaks with Dr. Patricia M. Delgado, DNP, APRN, DCNP. Patricia is a DNP-prepared principal investigator with extensive training in adult-gerontological primary care and subspecialty training in dermatology about her journey into clinical research, what hurdles she overcame to be afforded the opportunity to be a PI, and her perspective on the viability of this path for others with similar training. Her interests in the intersection of psychiatric and dermatological research was also discussed, from the perspective of there being unique and important questions to answer from her vantage point as a DNP-prepared clinical researcher.

In this episode, Ian reviews some literature and some questions surrounding the idea of whether quality improvement (QI) projects are just "research lite" or whether they have valid standing in and of themselves apart from research. Many people have written on whether QI is just 'research which doesn't require IRB approval and can't be gneralized,' while others are staunch proponents of the immediacy and primacy of QI initiatives, for various reasons, some of which will be explored in this episode. Ian discusses three primary components of this problem which are interesting to him: 1. QI and research may only differ on the front end regarding human subjects and ethics committees, 2. QI and traditional clinical investigations might be bridged by leveraging implementation science, and 3. generalizability and statistical inference may be the Achille's heel of the QI proponent.

In this episode, Ian takes a more esoteric thought-ride through the bramble of lived experience and shared health-illness experiences to arrive at a tentative conclusion that perhaps the development of a methodology to evaluate the ontological legitimacy of an externally valid measure of shared health-illness experiences is perhaps tenable after all... (then again, this is all just interesting pontificating at this point).

In this episode, Ian speaks with Dr. Angela Starkweather, PHD, ACNP-BC, CNRN, FAAN, Professor of Nursing at UConn School of Nursing and NINR-funded translational pain scientist, about biobehavioral mechanisms of pain and symptom self-management. They also talk at length about maintaining clinical competence as a clinical researcher in nursing science and balancing one's career aspirations across domains.

In this episode, Ian speaks with Dr. Theresa A. Koleck, PhD, RN, from University of Pittsburg School of Nursing about her expertise in omics and biomedical informatics. Dr. Koleck recently published a fascinating first-author paper in Nursing Research focused on the use of natural language processing (NLP) in the study of five deliberately selected symptoms. This project was a methodologically-focused feasibility pilot of the use of NLP and the NimbleMiner R-Studio Shiny package, created by one of her nurse scientist colleagues at Columbia University (Dr. Max Topaz). Additionally, they discuss Dr. Koleck's broader interests in symptoms and symptom burden.