Thread by @DoctorODonovan

👋 Welcome back to ‘How to Write a Paper’ (pt 4)

✍️This week = ‘How to Write a DISCUSSION’

📜We’ll be using @SohamBGlobal et al.'s excellent @GlobalHealthBMJ paper “Infection and mortality of healthcare workers worldwide from #COVID19" as our exemplar study

🧵Let’s start ⏭️

1/ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧?

👉To interpret the results - which requires you to commit & be 𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗱
🔗To link your results to previous studies
☝️To make recommendations
📚To help the reader understand your study strengths & limitations

2/ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞?

✅Re-state the RQ & how your key findings address it
✅State how & why your findings align/differ from other studies
✅How do your findings contribute to the wider field
✅Strengths/limitations
✅Make recommendations & directions for future work

3/ ⚠️ What to avoid?

🛑Don’t include new results
🛑 @seyeabimbola discusses the “The Sin of Overreach!” This is where you make sweeping statements too broad for the study conducted. Don't over-claim!
🛑Ambiguity - be clear whose data you are referring to

4/ ✅ 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐫

👀 Now we know what a good Discussion section should look like, let’s take a look at @SohamBGlobal et al.’s paper on global #COVID19 infection/deaths amongst #healthworkers & see how they put this into practice

Link to full text: gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/…

5/ The opening paragraph clearly states:

✅What they have done (1st SR to review deaths amongst HCWs in 195 countries)
✅Why they have done it (to investigate mortality burden amongst HCWs managing COVID)
✅Why we should care about it (it is the first major SR to do this)

⤵️

6/ ⚠️Remember we discussed being 𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗱?

@SohamBGlobal do exactly this.

They say:

🗣️ Look guys if you don’t stop HCWs from contracting COVID, not only will #COVID spread within health facilities, but you won’t have enough HCWs to staff them.

👀 Their bold statement ⤵️⤵️

7/ 🤔They also INTERPRET their results.

Here’s an example:

⚠️They noticed GPs were the doctors who appeared at highest risk of dying

Why? They suggest possible reasons:

- ⬇️PPE in the community?
- ⬆️ through flow of pts?
- Maybe just a reflection of total number of GPs?

8/ They then clearly state:

✅ STRENGTHS
❌LIMITATIONS and the...

“SO WHAT?” factor (AKA the X-Factor) of their paper

👉👉 They create a summary box for Implications for Policy and Practice - these are practical, actionable take-home points:

👍 We are now we are now half way through this series - I hope you've found it useful so far.

Credits this week:

@JonnyGucks @VelinLotta @renalcalculus @clifford0584 @TaraTChen & as ever @seyeabimbola for sharing his wonderful resources

#AcademicTwitter #phdchat #phdadvice