in this episode, we talk everything EPQ - why it is beneficial for medicine, how you should approach your topic idea, how to start lab research (for those artefact students) and towards the end, i talk about what i wish i knew before starting the EPQ!websites that may help you which are referenced in the pod:what statistical analysis should i use? --> https://stats.oarc.ucla.edu/spss/whatstat/what-statistical-analysis-should-i-usestatistical-analyses-using-spss/referencing generator --> https://www.mybib.com/library + downloads --> https://libgen.rs/☆ SOCIALS ☆my website: themediocredoctor.square.siteinstagram: @medicmornings @themediocredoctortiktok: @stinkybluebellsemail: [email protected]: themediocredoctortimestamps are as follows:[0:35] thank you[1:44] topic idea[4:17] the research process + how to structure your essay[10:15] process of artefacts (how to do your own experiments)[17:46] what i wish i knew before i started the EPQtranscript (automated - will contain inaccuracies)Good morning and welcome back to another episode of Medic Mornings. I'm your host Fiona and today we're going to be diving right into the EPQ qualification which is (I did the) AQA one. But I know that a few other exam boards have, Edexcel and OCR have one, but it's called something different. But I'm going to be talked about the EPQ, which I did and I know is the most popular ones. So, here we go. First off, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who listens. Honestly, everyone has been so overwhelmingly positive and so kind, thank you so so much. Honestly, when I made this podcast, I thought there was going to be so much hate because I'm not a medic yet. Not technically, I haven't started Medical School. I've gotten in but I haven't started and I was definitely nervous that there's going to be some people who are like, you're not a doctor yet. You're not a medical professional yet. Why are you talking about this? But if I could even impact one person, I would be overjoyed. So thank you. Thank you. And thank you so much guys for your support. Anyways, enough of that sappy sh*t, we're going to move on so I'm going to talk you through the process and what I did personally, I did a lot of experiments and then towards the end I'll talk about what I wish I knew you before doing the EPQ, and what I wished I would have told myself before I started So the first part is coming up with a topic idea. This is by far the most important part because you actually will change your topic idea throughout, and sometimes you have to adapt your experiment, sometimes you'll have to adapt your essay in order to manage the feasibility because sometimes you can start off with a very vague question and then towards research and towards righting your actual essay, you will realize that there is so so much to write about. And that's why you need a really good Mentor to kind of guide you through that. But I personally knew exactly what I wanted to do. I came into the EPQ thinking, I want to do something that involves bacteria and I want to do microbiology. I want to do all these experimental techniques and be proficient. I said, I want to learn from the science technician. At my school, I want to learn about, you know, bacteria assays on these different techniques that people do in the lab. And my school has been so supportive doing that, but your topic idea does not need to be solidified. Honestly, I changed it a little bit before I was like, oh my God, I'm going to use all these different types of bacteria, but I change that after 2 just e coli. I wanted both a gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria but the costs were definitely not feasible. Like I don't know what I was thinking with the school budget but I'm still so grateful that they allowed me to do it. So our school implemented this rule that you needed three different topic ideas. So the topic ideas have to kind of be similar to each other and even if you are dead set on one idea, you should still come up with some alternatives. Especially when you're talking to your mentor and they will give you some really good advice on which topic idea would be most feasible and which you can write the most content and the best argumentative perspective and definitely the most important part is coming up with the topic idea in the first place. Okay. Moving on. The research process is the second part which I'm going to be talking about today. And the thing about scientific articles is that it's a completely different type of writing, it is not like a section but it is not like those BBC articles that you see on the health website and you kind of get dumped into the deep end with scientific EPQs because it is just a completely different style of writing. For example, when you read these scientific articles, it becomes very obvious that there's a specific structure. So you have to have the title and then you have to have the author under the title? So I just put Fiona in them and my school name and it starts off with an abstract which is like 50 to 100 word shorts. Conclusion, like an overall discussion of what you actually achieved in your experiment and what their goal was etc. And then you have your introduction after that, which is a longer version of talking about the background of your experiment. What made you want to do in the first place? Your motivations for it on some background information. So for me, my experiment was on how metal ions can actually inhibit these bacterial specimens and I use copper silver and zinc ions, and in the introduction, I just talked about how each bacteria slowly died from these metal, maybe the metal ions, cause the membrane of the bacteria to break down at, or maybe inhibited, a part of respiration within the bacterial cell and it was just a little bit of background information within the introduction after that. You then talk about the methods area which is where you put your methodology, your experiment, your equipment, what you actually did and you can put some pictures in there of your experiment as well and then you can talk about the results after that, which is what we actually found. Don't put any raw data. I just put some standard deviation, some numbers. We also want to talk about the significance of the data. You also want to talk about the main numerical findings from those experiments. Then the last part, not the last part of the last main part, is a discussion, in which you evaluate the points, the parts of your experiment that did not go right or wrong. So I talked about how my experiment lacked ecological validity. It lacked reliability because there was not specific enough equipment. We didn't have micropipettes, we didn't have spectrophotometers. We didn't have that good equipment, because it was in the school lab. And then after that, you have Acknowledgements, which is why you say, thank you to your teachers that helped you or the mentors that you have or any outside perspective that you had, so maybe you talked to your professor? Maybe you talked to your parents, maybe you talk to your teachers outside of the school, it's anyone really.The last part is Literature Cited. Literature Cited is different to a bibliography in that you're not allowed to write bibliography in scientific articles. I have no idea why but it's just is that. All right, so, Some notes about the research process, you want to get approval from your teachers and mentors from an early stage and by November, I think you should have sent that. You might be in the process of talking to your teachers about your research idea. You also want to keep an e folder, all the PDFs that you say. So for me, I use Libgen.rs. it will save your life. It has every single book. I don't think I don't think it's pirating, but You know what? You definitely want to do a lot of prior research on that topic before you start any big writing into your essay. And this is just because you need to make sure that your topic idea is concrete. And also if you are writing a scientific article, which you probably will be if you're listening to this podcast, You should always write the abstract last and this is because you will write about your finding and get to a later stage with it. And if you start writing your abstract first, it starts getting messy. You start getting a little bit biased because you're trying to like skew your data, or skew your argument towards what you've already written in the abstract and trying to like manipulate unconsciously your data to try and fit that narrative that you've already written in your abstract about your findings. And that is just completely unscientific and not something that you should be doing especially later on and University level, I think abstracts should always be written last no arguments there. Okay, so this part is going to be about artifacts and if you're not doing an artifact I will use a timestamp in the description so you can just get this part. But this is just for people who are interested in doing a lab experiment, which I have advice for. But if you're also interested in this, if you're interested in publishing and doing research in University, you're welcome to this in the head. So here, I came up with the equipment. I came up with a risk assessment and risk assessments and let me pull up my document first. So, the risk assessment is a major part in your EPQ because you have to present a solid amount of understanding into lab safety and fire safety, and the hazards that working with specimens and working in the lab might spring. So I use Excel and I made a really cute risk assessment. And I'll tell you about the headers that I used. I used hazards description, impact description, or how it would impact. Theoretically, I use the probability that impact and the score. So I use a numerical scale from one to five, one being the lowest level of harm and the five being the highest level of harm. And I also talked about risk mitigation meaning if something were to catch fire or if the bacteria did become pathogenic, what would be the next steps? And the next course of action to mitigate the circumstance and honestly, I only wrote five things that I wrote about bacteria becoming pathogenic, the spread of bacteria to the public, which is very viable. But in the school lab where you’re Washing your hands constantly. You're wearing a lot of coats. You're not actually touching the bacteria but instead like swabbing it and making very sure that you wipe your hands with antiseptic before you leave the lab. It's very, very low risk. The next few hazardous, I described for a sample collection. Bacteria, sample may be incorrect and I talked about fire safety, you know the Bunsen burner flame could cause serious Burns and also talked about incorrect bacteria being grown, so maybe it wasn't E.coli do with actually another strain. That was more positive unique and those were all very low-risk. So the risk assessment was shown to my mentor to the science technician and they all agreed that I was, okay, to go to the next thing that you should account for is the number of trials, you're going to do the number of Trials is, how many times are going to be during the experiment over and over again. So I did a total of two trials. The first trial I did was a pilot where I tested it for the very first time I went in Line, I had made my own method. I had crossed checked it with other studies, I had talked to it with my mentor but it was the first time that I was actually plan on doing it a lot and it was a really exciting experience just being in control of my own inner samples. My own dishes, my own equipment, was so exciting and fascinating, I found out, I was really passionate about it. And yeah, that was just genuinely something that I was super, super interested in. And then after the first child, I took the results, I did the statistical analysis and then there were some issues with the silver discs because they had like, change the different color or something. So we just altered that by keeping it in the dark and Not putting it in the oven stuff like that. And yeah, you need to be able to modify experiments as you go along, and that's something. You should always put in your evaluation. Okay? Finally is the results. So, when you're talking about experimental results, you always want to back it up with statistical analysis. For me, I did two different types of tests. I had one trial that showed normal distribution and one that didn't show normality. And I talked to my teachers about it and they said, I should do two types of tests, which is very uncommon, but I personally that their Kruskal Wallace test and the t test. This is something that you should check on. Scientific website about what type of test you should be doing, especially with the trials and the type of method that you're using repeated measures, independent measures, it's a completely different. It's something that I have never done before and you should ask for advice from everyone from your biology teacher just searching on scientific form. Honestly, the most important thing that you should take from this episode is that you have to display your results in a way that a non-scientific person would be able to understand and that because my mentor my teachers, the people that graded, my assessment had no idea about the statistical analysis that I was doing, and it was not something that I could easily explain especially. He said there were so many different variables. I could explain normal distribution, but I couldn't explain how I chose that specific test because it required a lot more discussion into like independent-measures repeated, measure. The type of designs that I did in my experiments and you have to be able to cut your results down into one or two rows of numerical data and simplified that into a way that a non-scientific person would understand. Because once you start talkin in scientific jargon, you start talking about the normal distribution without actually explaining it. Your teachers will just assume that you're waffling on. You don't know what you're actually saying and that's really important. You. Ossify exactly in layman's terms what it is that you're measuring finally where I T E section where I talk about, what I wish I knew before, I started the EPQ. The first thing, I wish I knew this that you should reference throughout rather than all at the end. I thought that I could reference at all at the end because you know all scientific literature is kind of similar. Right. I thought that I could do it all at the end because I could just search up again on the internet and search up for Batum and somehow find it again. Know that is not the case. I feel like we're that you think it was okay to miss out on one or two cited litchers. But once you get to a higher level, it would be a bigger mistake and a bigger issue. So, it's better to get into the habit of referencing while you go. The second thing. I wish I knew is that there are no footnotes for scientific, literature whatsoever. So, you know, footnotes where people write essays and they put these little tiny size 11 fonts at the very bottom of the page and it has websites on. It has like those referencing Harvard referencing types. And God does not exist in scientific literature, so don't waste your time on trying to do different notes because it should not be there. Cuz I think I wish I knew is how much the production log actually matters. It is literally like 60 to 70% of your grade, your actual artifact for your actual essay. They will read over it. But the most important thing is to show that you have loved everything that you've done as you went along. So, your production log is essentially a timeline of what you've done and I forgot on so many occasions to fill in my production log. So I had to not go back and think, oh my God, what did I do three months ago? And it was really stressful. Initially, I was really scared to give out my EPQ, because it was just a Surefire way to be subject to plagiarism. I am now open to sharing pictures of The methodology of my experiment on my equipment and videos of how I actually did the experiment and if you are interested in that, send me a DM on Instagram saying you're from the podcast and I will be happy to send those to you. And I hope they help someone out there who's struggling with their EPQ and best of luck to you all genuinely for sticking through that, you can q. And honestly it is difficult, it can be tiring and sometimes you might lose sight of the true goal because it doesn't really contribute to your University offer and as Iraq's way, except which of you, but we'll leave the hot. It is an excellent way to help your research skills to build those passions and to really find out what you love before you start going into University. I hope. You guys find a little bit more about yourself and really appreciate what to eat. If you have to offer it as an amazing opportunity. And yeah, thank you for sticking around on this podcast. It really is amazing to hear so much from all of you. If you are enjoying this podcast, please give it a rating on Spotify. Apple podcast wherever you're listing it from. It would really help me out a lot. Thank you for joining me again and see you next time. Bye, bye.

Ver todos los episodios