Katie feels that researchers need to be open-minded, empathetic and humble
Transcript
I think researchers need open-mindedness, empathy, and humility. A lot of terms that are not easy to train for, but I think they need to genuinely want to do this and not just be doing it to tick the box because patients and families can feel that. They can feel whether it’s genuine or not. When I say open-minded, I think they have to be willing to change direction in the project if necessary or to incorporate other perspectives if necessary. I think that relationship building skills and a lot of soft skills that are tough to train for, but that you kind of develop over time and some of those you either have or you don’t, but you do have to I think truly value the patient’s perspective, patient and family perspective and the contribution that they can make. So once you have that, the rest sort of comes. Certainly you need this as a researcher anyway, but time management skills and the ability to leave yourself enough time to build this in I think is important.
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