PhD Uppsala University

Every year, before summer vacation, I will try to write a year summary so I can reflect on the year’s progress.

Year 1

This first year was slightly longer, let’s say. I started at the University by the end of January 2023 (the 23rd, to be precise). Between January and April, I worked as a research assistant. During that time, I learned what I could about digital health informatics, digital clinical trials, interventions, and so on. I was also working on my research plan – which was already written when I started. Still, I was encouraged to make it “more of my own”, which, of course, was a good idea, as it allowed me to read and understand more about the field.

I was also trying to get used to the daily community (2h40 every day), which made me tired as hell – I got the impression that I never got so tired in my life as these initial months – probably not true, but that’s how I felt during the first six months. It took a toll on me, and the last week before vacation, I had a gastritis crisis that put me at home for a week.

For those unfamiliar with PhDs in Sweden, although we are still “students”, the PhD seems more like a job. We usually have contracts of 40 weekly hours, there are vacations and parental leave, and you have an office and a computer. And a salary (maybe not the best well-paid, but still a salary). When you are fully dedicated to your research, meaning full-time, the PhD usually lasts four years. In my case (and for many people), you may need to work 80% on your research and 20% on administrative tasks – and it can mean from giving classes to basically anything. In my case, my “administrative” demand is to design a new platform for the conduction of digital interventions and data collection. In this role, I’m the product designer providing the UX, UI, and UX writing material (and, later, the UX research). During my 80%, I dedicated myself to my research, which is to investigate research participants’ engagement and retention in clinical research.

By the end of April, my PhD officially started. My first task as a PhD student was to prepare my ethics application for approval. As a rule of thumb, studies conducted in the medical area usually need ethics approval. My research is not so connected to health conditions itself, but there are chances that sensitive information may come up. I’m unaware of how ethics approvals work in other places (countries). In Sweden, there is an Ethics Review Authority that reviews all applications. The applications are around 13 sections, which may vary according to your research, and each section is composed of several questions. The answers were around 30 pages long in a Word document, and I needed to describe the studies, procedures, steps, and risks. In summary, all the necessary details. All supplementary materials, like questionnaires, surveys, interview scripts, workshop scripts, and advertisement pieces, needed to be attached to the application (and everything in Swedish, so I needed to have some invaluable collaborations here). The application was ready by September 2023, including all support material, translations, and everything else. In October, we received our approval.

Meanwhile, I had my post-registration seminar. In my department, all new PhD students must present their research plan to a reviewer to raise questions and discuss potential points of attention. This presentation should be done up to the first six months of the PhD. I had my post-registration in September, which led us to make some changes in the research plan (which was good!). We added a systematic literature review as part of it. We decided to focus on research participants and not focus on researchers. After the seminar, I took some days to review my plan and uploaded a new version for approval.

We started the systematic literature review in October. Since I had never done one before, I had thousands of questions and no clue where to start. I researched some references to have an idea of where to start and scheduled a meeting with the University’s Library. For the first conversation, I prepared some material, such as my initial review question, a list of keywords, and databases to look into. Our librarian helped with a pilot search, with 200 results, that I could review and check if they were relevant.

The review was made during November, among the courses and all the other tasks. At the beginning of 2024, I could refine the keywords list, and a second pilot search was made.

In October, I also had the opportunity to participate in my first academic conference, U-CARE Venue, presenting a poster about my PhD project.

Meanwhile, the PhD courses were taking place. Between June and August, I attended the Co-Design of Digital Health Innovations course, where I had the opportunity to develop a very interesting project for midwives. One of the advantages of working in a university with several students from various places is the possibility of working with students from very different places like Pakistan, Uganda, and Iran.

After this course, I started Research Ethics in the Social Sciences. It was an intense course that covered many aspects, from ethics codes to ethics in online research, power and positionality, ethnography, and data-driven research.

In November, I decided to take not one but two courses (I don’t recommend doing this way – PhD courses can be pretty intense and highly demanding). However, the content of both was excellent. One was Patient and Public Involvement in Research, where I learned what it means to have patients and the public involved in research design and collaboration. It was really mind-blowing. The second course, Systematic Review, Meta-Synthesis and Meta-Analysis, by Dalarna University, was also an excellent course, even more so for someone with basically no experience with systematic literature reviews.

The first half of 2024 went by quickly. With all the design demands, meetings, journal clubs, writing workshops, and Brain Pubs, time could easily go by. The program is great but intense.

Between February and June, I was dedicated to writing my systematic literature review protocol, preparing everything to send our survey, preparing email lists, writing messages, and organising materials. In April, May, and July, I sent messages inviting former users to give feedback about our project.

Now, here we are, June 2024. The protocol is almost done (well, let’s see). A survey was sent and responded to. There is still a tremendous lot to do (and there is still a week before summer vacation).