Starting Point One of the Great Advantages

¶ … Starting Point

One of the great advantages of performing research is that one is never alone when doing so: Even highly innovative research is based on what has gone before, and every researcher has as a guide all those who have previously engaged with the same ideas. This is the case with my research, which focuses on trauma centers. I have taken as a point of comparison and contrast -- really more as a starting point than anything else -- Christopher Gill's Advance Study in Research Methods in Public Service.

His focus is the ways in which many American trauma centers are insufficiently prepared for a major natural or social disaster. Gill's focus analyzes how operations research (a form of mathematical modeling) can be used to assess medical care by examining how individuals as well as organizations make decisions. In certain ways, this type of analysis is analogous to the kinds of models that economists make when considering the ways in which people make decisions about how to utilize their resources.

All institutions have limited resources. Even the most well-funded projects and enterprises have finite possibilities. When the arena is as profoundly important (as literally vital) as trauma response, it is essential that the best possible decisions be made. Even if there were unlimited resources for trauma care, there would still be the issue of how to make the best choices. One strategy in assessing how to improve trauma care is to look at what one could call the more technical aspects such as staffing decisions, plan of the physical building, drug protocols, etc. This is a valid and highly informative perspective, and must be a central part of any analysis of trauma care.

I will certainly consider these factors in my own research, but I will also apply an ethnographic lens to my research. While we may think that culture is something that only "foreigners" or "natives" have, every one of us belongs to a range of different cultures. Every group we participate in has its own ways of doing things, its own rules and conventions. This will be the focus of my research: How the cultural rules that guide each person who contributes to trauma care affect the quality of that care. Complicating this analysis is the fact that each patient also brings his/her own cultural models of what kind of care they should seek under different circumstances and I will investigate how the different professional cultures that trauma team members belong to affects their ability to provide the most seamless care possible. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, emergency response planners, epidemiologists, national guard leaders (among others) conceptualize the nature of both trauma and trauma care in at least slightly different ways. These differences bring a cognitive advantage in that they can greatly increase the flexibility of the decision-making process.