Self-awareness and patience are key skills for researchers, according to Emma

Transcript

Interviewer: So what kind of skills do you think researchers need to bring to the table then if they’re going to be part of the partnerships?

I think a big one is self-awareness, like an awareness of the power dynamic that exists in research and being willing to address that. Because when you’re bringing – if you’re bringing patients or community members in and trying to maintain the kind of typical power dynamic, then it’s not going to work. So I think being willing to be self-aware and to acknowledge that even though these folks might not have the same research training or specific scientific knowledge that you have, they’ve got tons of expertise and they are experts in whatever it is that they bring to the table which is just as important. 

So I think kind of being able to step back and to really think about what it is that they’re bringing and highlight that as value in the project rather than viewing it sometimes as something that’s just going to add time or money or whatnot. So I think patience is another thing you probably need to have [laughs] to be involved in that work. And then just like I mentioned some basic training, resources to go to the same way when you’re doing a different type of research you have the gold star for whatever it is, knowing where to look for okay how do I do this if I come up against a barrier in this research where I’m engaging patients, having somewhere to go and get some kind of answers or a resource would be also really important.

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