april 15, 2024: a week in the life

this week

I had the privilege to meet with blood donation research experts from across the EU, England, and Australia this Monday as they gave their feedback on our research unit’s completed, ongoing, and proposed work. I learned about the current priorities in our field and was inspired by our visitors’ engagement with my many questions! During the rest of the week, I read around the systematic review and meta-analysis literature to determine the scope for developing new methods for synthesising multiple studies (something I’d been inspired to think about during the completion of my own review). I also received feedback on that review chapter from a kind colleague and made important changes, including some slight statistical modifications. Finally, I’m excited to share that my abstract was selected for poster presentation during a research sharing event on the 29th with our clinical colleagues, which brings me to …

next week

Though I made a rough start on my poster presentation in a week’s time, I still need to refine my results and interpretation sections. I’m also looking forward to getting some feedback on colleagues who are both familiar and unfamiliar with the work I intend to present. Outside of that deadline-driven work, I’m planning to prepare slides to share the results of my first primary data analysis with unit colleagues in the coming week, which includes making sure I’ve interpreted my own results in the best (and most cautious) way I can!

outside the lab

I had the pleasure of hosting two PhD (DPhil, as they say in the “other place”) students on Saturday for a walk around town and some lunch at a fast-casual Korean place. It was strange and wondrous to transport myself back in time and to share research stories, which we couldn’t avoid despite it being the weekend!

on the reading list

Karregat JHM, Blokhuis D, Quee FA, van den Hurk K. Iron supplementation: A qualitative study on the perception of blood donors, blood collection staff and donor physicians. Vox Sanguinis. 2024;119(1):16-26.

weekly photo

A very important massage.

about me

I’m Yaning (she/her), a PhD candidate in Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. I am working with colleagues in the Blood and Transplant Research Unit, the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, and NHS Blood and Transplant (England’s national blood service) to improve the safety and efficiency of voluntary whole blood donation. I’m supervised by the amazing Dr Lois Kim and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. This is my blog about my journey through this candidature, starting from nine months before my transfer of status. Please feel free to reach out at yw645 [at] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk!