Reflections of Research

Meet Frankie, she is a second year medical student at the university of Sheffield and has spent the past 6 weeks working with researcher Miss Lauren Powell in a research setting for the first time. This is what she has to say about her experience...

I have spent the last 6 weeks on a research attachment in the School of Health and related Research (ScHARR) writing a scoping review on whether apps can be useful for children and young people with ADHD. I found the task a little daunting at first as I haven’t done much academic writing before and a scoping review was a whole new type of paper to me.

As I gained a deeper understanding through carrying out more research, I found this project really engaging. It has been interesting to expand my knowledge on ADHD and to find out about new apps that can be useful. I particularly liked the apps that used technology such as eye-tracking and the indirect apps that could be used by teachers, parents and doctors surrounding the child’s life. I am excited to find out about new research as it is conducted.

I have developed many skills during this project including; learning how to carry out database searches and screen hundreds of papers, improving my excel skills, learning how to make a consort diagram and improving my referencing. This is also the first paper that I have written with a literature review and I enjoyed how each part would flow into the next: What ADHD is. How it affects the child’s life. Why it needs to be managed. How technology is engaging. That apps are an accessible form of technology. Everything made sense!

I would like to thank our supervisor for doing a great job, tracking our progress each week and making sure that we’d made sufficient progress. As a novice in the academic writing world, I feel like this project has helped me to develop all of the skills required with academic writing and has given me more confidence that I can bring to future projects.

Written by Frankie Dimambro-Denson