Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Purpose and Objectives As the field of fetal medicine is evolving and many new treatments are being offered, few issues are left unmet and require further studies and analysis. We aim to address unmet questions in fetal medicine in order to achieve an agreed upon baseline and consensus from a group of experts that deals with these issues on a daily basis at their clinic. Specifically we aim to evaluate quality and safety parameters for maternal and fetal complications associated with fetal surgery. Study Population In this study, fetal surgery experts will be invited to participate in an anonymous survey in the Delphi methodology. There will be no limitation to the number of participants as long as they will meet the inclusion criteria. Student’s role The student will be responsible for managing the following steps (could be done partially in person and remotely): Recruitment Process In this project, the participants (expert panel) will be recruited by sending the invitation email from SurveyMonkey, an online software that will be used in this study. The questionnaires will be designed in the software, and invitation emails will be sent from the Boston Children's Hospital account on SurveyMonkey. No advertisement will be used. Experts will be informed that by entering the Survey they provide their agreement to participate in the study. The student will be responsible to locate the potential participants and manage the recruitment process. Describe the procedure/assessment The student will be expected to get familiarized with the Delphi study methodology. In accordance with the Delphi methodology, this study will be conducted through several rounds. The first round will be a brainstorming session, and we will send the participants open questions. After that, all the responses will be collected anonymously from SurveyMonkey, and their opinions will be categorized and summarized into statements. In the following rounds, the summarized statements will be sent for evaluation. Each of the proposed statements will be evaluated on the Likert scale from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree). In addition, each participant will be encouraged to add comments for any suggestions to modify each item. Statements with a median score of 3 or less will be excluded. Statements with a median score of 5 will be accepted as a consensus. Statements with a median score of 4 will be modified based on the comments and re-applied to the next round. In the last round, experts will be asked whether they agree or disagree to include final statements. Agreement of more than 75% will be considered the consensus, and those parameters will be included in the final report. Data preparation and analysis The student will be responsible to collect and summarize the data after each round and prepare the next round accordingly. At the conclusion of all rounds the student will be expected to summarize the statements that have reached a consensus.