Designing a management system for the co-ordination of research projects at the School of Medical Sciences (SMS), KNUST
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Date
2004-11-24
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Abstract
“All progress is precarious and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another.” Martin Luther King.
Considerations of social changes such as education, information technology, diversification of health services, the need to spread services to rural folks, coupled with the gross
inadequacy of the doctor/population ratio for Ghana, fortifies arguments in favour of research.
SMS is an institution with faculty status at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. The school partners with the tertiary hospital, KATFI, in the training of medical students and also in the delivery of health care to surrounding communities including all regions to the north of the country. Senior Members of the school are mainly clinicians who undertake studies of various kinds that bring economic benefits through averting disease and decreasing health care costs.
This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out with the aim of designing a system/model that can more effectively manage and coordinate research projects in the school. With a focus on researchers, the study employed unstructured interviews, questionnaire and a review of some relevant documents to investigate the current system of undertaking research, research management and coordination and the perceived gaps impeding it. The ultimate in this study, is a design that would effectively manage and coordinate research at SMS.
Responses to questionnaire administered to sixty two (62) researchers and interviews with ten (10) key informants were analysed using Stata Version 7 Computer Programme.
Findings of the study included evidence that, from the conception of ideas right through to the completion of research projects, most investigators deem research as individual dreams with little or no collaboration with investigators of other projects, let alone the school.. This problem is compounded by perceived management gaps such as bureaucracies, disinterest, lack of institutional funding, lack of policies, lack of avenues for disseminating findings and results and disunity of command.
This notwithstanding, successes have been chalked in research at SMS but a missing link is obvious. That link stifles the needed healthy competition, challenges the philosophical incorporation of research into the structure and functioning of SMS and slows down progress and growth. That link bars the culture of quality, continuity and sharing in research. As a subject, that link has received little attention but is potentially more important than other research issues. That link is EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT and COORDINATION.
A proposal is made for a standardized research protocol to be institutionalized in the school so as to streamline all studies. Further, a Research and Development Unit, headed by a Coordinator and linked to the Committee for Human Research Publications and Ethics has to be instituted to oversee the management and coordination of studies in the school.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Community
Health, School of Medical Sciences, College of Health Sciences
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial
fulfilment of the requirements for the award of MSc.degree in Health Services Planning and Management, 2004