There is a lot more excitement than usual around ESI headquarters… which is saying something. This is mainly because the coming months see three in-person workshops that we’ve been looking forward to.
First up, there is a GRADE workshop taking place at the University of Galway on the 18th and 19th April. This workshop has always been a popular online event so we were only too happy to give people a chance to learn in person. The speakers are our very own Senior Methodologist Dr K. M. Saif-Ur-Rahman, our Cochrane Germany colleague Philipp Kapp who is a researcher in the Institute for Evidence in Medicine at the University of Freiburg, and last but not least our fearless ESI Director, Prof. Declan Devane who always puts on a great show! The facilitators will lead the lucky attendees through the complete process of guideline development with GRADE using a concrete example: starting with selecting a relevant PICO question and ending with formulating a recommendation.
ESI Ireland superstar contributor is giving our next in-person workshop, Prof. Andrew Booth on the 22nd May at the University of Galway. It wouldn’t be a Prof. Booth show without an intriguing title: Conducting Time-Limited or resource-constrained qualitative evidence synthesis: rapid QES, QES updates and overviews “TIME-FLIES”. As anyone who has been to one of Andrew’s famous ESI webinars or his ESI online workshops knows, there is always plenty of food for thought after the Booth experience. TIME-FLIES will explore the variety of responses to a demand for synthesising qualitative research speedily and efficiently. Indeed, the workshop is designed to allow attendees to apply what they learn to any type of qualitative evidence synthesis, regardless of whether it is standard or resource-constrained, with tips for productive and efficient working.
Our next (I won’t say final as we have one more in-person workshop in the works and keep an eye on our newsletter and our ESI twitter account for details on that in the coming weeks) in-person workshop facilitator is another fan favourite, Julie Glanville. One for the librarians and information specialists out there, Julie returns once more for a workshop on Designing Systematic Searches: Introductory Workshop in the Trinity Translational Medicine Institute at St James’ Hospital in Dublin. Her workshop last year was exceptionally popular so we were delighted when she agreed to make a comeback tour. Julie’s workshop will provide attendees with the knowledge and skills to conduct a basic systematic search of the literature including designing and running searches on key databases and identifying and selecting search filters.
As always, we like to keep our ESI audience riveted, so keep an eye on our Upcoming Training and Webinar webpage over the next few weeks. We have one more addition to our in-person workshops this year… it promises to be a mixed-methods type of affair! As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us at esi@universityofgalway.ie if you have any questions.
Dr Tom Conway
