Heidi R. Green

When Was the First Clinical Trial?

As you’ve probably (hopefully!) picked up from other posts on this blog, my research is centred around clinical trials and their methodology. Trials can be intimidating for people that don’t know a whole lot about them, and as I’ve mentioned before, the ‘guinea pig‘ concept seems to haunt trial participation. In this series of posts…
#365papers May Update

In my first post on this blog, I set myself 3 PhD-related goals for 2017. One of those goals was to read more widely, and more frequently, and I decided that doing the #365papers challenge would be a good way to do that. This month’s reading has been pretty rubbish if I’m honest. I’ve been…
May Festival 2017 – Aberdeen

Every year for the past 5 years, the University of Aberdeen has held an annual event called May Festival. May Festival was last weekend, and I went along with some other staff members from the Health Services Research Unit (HSRU) to engage with the public and talk clinical trials. We used fruit polos (red group)…
How to Make the Most out of Your PhD Supervisors

Choosing a PhD supervisor is difficult. Often you’re meeting them for the first time to discuss the PhD, and there’s not a lot of time to get to know the way they work. I’ve been lucky with my supervisory team and the unit I’m working in. I get on well with my supervisors, we seem…
Self-Care Tips to Keep You Sane: Reading for Pleasure

At the end of January I wrote about the importance of academic self-care for PhD students; I didn’t delve too far into the specifics of what I do in my downtime and a lot of people asked. ‘It’s hard to switch off’ and ‘I find it hard to relax’ were the two phrases I encountered…
‘I Just Don’t Want to be a Human Guinea Pig’ – Why Taking Part in Trials Isn’t What You Think

When I tell people that I’m doing a PhD in clinical trials methodology I’m usuallly greeted with one of two responses, ‘Oh right, so you’re still a student?’ or ‘Oh my god, trials? To test drugs and stuff?’. The ‘test drugs and stuff’ response isn’t usually framed in a positive light either; eventually these conversations…
4th International Clinical Trials Methodology Conference and 38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Clinical Trials – Liverpool, May 2017

This week I left the grey skies of Aberdeen in favour of… Liverpool. Nowhere hugely exotic, but the weather was absolutely beautiful for the 3 days I was there. Anyway, more about why I was there. Sunday to Wednesday saw almost 1,000 delegates congregate in Liverpool for the joint 4th International Clinical Trials Methodology Conference…
What to do When You Don’t Feel Like Writing

A few weeks ago I posted a blog post about the good things about freelancing whilst doing a PhD. On that post, Jennie from A Muddled Student commented asking about how I got used to writing when I didn’t feel like it, so I thought it’d be a good idea to write up a blog…
Visualising Statistics to Avoid Misinterpretation

A few weeks ago I came across a TED talk given by Mona Chalabi titled, ‘3 ways to spot a bad statistic‘. If you’re interested in science communication at all, I thoroughly recommend you watch it below: Mona is a Data Journalist, and she’s seriously talented (after watching this talk I turned into a bit…
#365papers April Update

In my first post on this blog, I set myself 3 PhD-related goals for 2017. One of those goals was to read more widely, and more frequently, and I decided that doing the #365papers challenge would be a good way to do that. This month’s reading has been good! After a slow March, I was…