Authors*: Celia Laur, PhD1,2,+ and Priscilla Medeiros, PhD2,3,+
Affiliations at time of project:
1 Postdoctoral Fellow, Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care (WIHV)
2Integrated Knowledge Translation Research Network (IKTRN) trainee
3Postdoctoral Fellow, Women’s College Research Institute
It all started with a discussion had by Sandy Steinwender and Aislinn Conway, co-chairs of the Integrated Knowledge Translation Research Network (IKTRN) Trainee group and the Executive Committee of IKTRN, in the Spring of 2021. The discussion concluded with agreement that there was a need to learn more about how the COVID-19 pandemic had changed the learning opportunities for integrated knowledge translation (IKT) trainees. At the time, some interesting articles were appearing in the literature about the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on trainees from different fields. With the reliance of IKT on relationships and in-person connections, they were interested to learn more about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on IKTRN trainees.
To help explore this topic, Sandy and Aislinn developed interview guides and set-up a virtual discussion meeting with breakout sessions for the IKTRN Trainee group and invited members to submit brief vignettes about their experience. For many of us, this meeting was the start of a year-long journey to unpack what was discussed in this meeting, and to reflect on our own experiences, as we worked together to produce and publish an essay. Our essay is a summary of the collective experiences of IKTRN trainees and aims to provide suggestions on how organizations and universities can support trainees conducting IKT/collaborative research. We plan to write a separate blog to summarize our findings as soon as the paper is published.
In writing this essay, we each played multiple roles as data collectors, research participants, analysts and authors. Sometimes this was quite a challenge! As analysts and authors, we wanted to be true to the data, but as participants we could also add valuable context and further reflection that was not necessarily captured in our data. We worked through this by acknowledging our positionality and its influence on our observations, results and conclusions.
Throughout this process, we also considered our positionality by reflecting on our own power and privilege. For example, many of us were fortunate to have remained employed throughout the pandemic and were able to work safely from home. As authors and participants, we are from diverse backgrounds in terms of our years of IKT experience, levels of education, geographical locations and resources to support our IKT research, which helped to enrich our group discussions. However, we acknowledged that many perspectives were missing, such as the ideas of our supervisors, research partners, universities and health system organizations. We discussed options for how to be more representative. However, based on the composition of our group and our own capacity, we decided to go into depth with our own experiences, rather than breadth, which would have involved further engagement with these other groups.
Working as part of this team was a great experience. We learned a lot from each other, and it was really interesting (and fun!) to work through this together. On reflection, there are a few things we might have done a little differently and hope others can learn from our experience. As with IKT in general, it takes some time to get to know each other and figure out how we work as a group. Is it better to meet more often and go through details in the meetings since everyone is focused, or work offline and hope people can find the time? We opted for more collaborative meetings and then cancelled when it was not needed. We also had to balance how often to ask for written feedback from the full group. As we are all very collaborative, and this piece was a reflection on our experience, we got a lot of group feedback! Stricter timelines, less reflection or a different topic might have changed how frequently we asked for feedback, but for this essay, we think we made the right choice. Next time we might approach some parts of this work a little more holistically from the beginning, not only considering the theoretical underpinnings of the paper at the onset to guide data analysis, but also designating leads on the paper (first authors) and coordinating dissemination opportunities (like this blog) early in the writing process. Having these details sorted out early might give more opportunities for everyone in the group to lead different aspects of the work.
The obvious benefit of this project is the publication that helps all our careers. However, the chance to get to know and work with other IKTRN trainees has been a huge added benefit and we look forward to working with everyone again in the future. As some of us move out of the trainee group as independent researchers, we hope that future trainees can learn from our experience and will come together with new and creative ways to work together and get to know each other!
*Supported by: Tram Nguyen, Meghan Gilfoyle, Aislinn Conway, Emily Giroux, Femke Hoekstra, Jean Michelle Legasto-Mulvale, Emily Ramage, Brenda Tittlemier, Brianne Wood, and Sandy Steinwender, IKT Research Network Trainee Group Authors (Cheryl Moser, Nicole Mackenzie, Ilja Ormel, and Charly Degen)
+Celia Laur was funded by a CIHR Health System Impact Fellow (postdoctoral) at the time of this work. Priscilla Medeiros was funded by the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network (CTN 262) at the time of this work.