Sixth year medical student Sam Tafari has earned the nickname ‘Super Sam’ within the MIRI Research Support Unit.
Dr Alison Pighills says she has never supported a novice researcher who has powered through every task as quickly and efficiently as Sam.
“Sam has amazed us all with his ability to get through each of the requirements for setting up a research project. He is so driven and will make a wonderful researcher one day, not least a good doctor,” she said.
Sam had a keen interest in learning how to design and undertake a research project and Dr Pie-Chen Danielle Wu has allowed him to have this opportunity.
Working with Dr Wu, Sam has helped develop an application for renal patients being considered for transplant.
“We have developed an App for chronic kidney disease patients to help track their progress in getting all the clinical assessments done as part of their kidney transplant work up process and will provide educational resources and information on the transplant process,” said Sam.
An ethics application is currently in process for a randomised controlled trial to test the effectiveness of the App.
“This will be a pilot project that would aim to recruit about 15 patients over a nine-month period and would test the effectiveness of the App in reducing kidney transplant ‘work up’ timeframes,” said Sam.
Overall the application hopes to not only reduce these timeframes, but also increase patient understanding and satisfaction in the kidney transplant process.
It is hoped that this research project would have the potential to be rolled out to larger hospitals to obtain a greater sample size for a definitive trial.
