Data collectors' review day

In addition to the personal coaching of data collectors, Stichting HIV Monitoring (SHM) organises a review day every 6 months for all the data collectors. The last review day on 2 June 2015 had a varied programme with both internal and invited speakers. 

Here we take a quick look at the highlights of the day.

The day opened with a short word of welcome and introduction by Sima Zaheri, manager of SHM’s patient data and quality control unit.

The first invited speaker of the day was Faydra Lieveld, research physician at the department of infectious diseases at the University Medical Center Utrecht, who spoke about hepatitis B and the Harmonic study in which she works together with SHM. The aim of the Harmonic study is to compare the incidence of end stage liver disease in patients with hepatitis B mono-infection and patients with hepatitis B and HIV co-infection in the Netherlands.

Dr Lieveld’s talk was followed by a talk given by Dr Suzanne Jurriaans, head of HIV diagnostics at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. Dr Jurriaans gave a clear and accessible explanation of the laboratory techniques involved in the diagnostic work-ups for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C, such as immunoblot and PCR.  

The last speaker before lunch was Mariska Hillebregt, SHM data management coordinator. Mariska explained certain aspects of the quality control process and provided the data collectors with specific guidelines on how they should implement the requests for quality checks sent out by the data management team.

The afternoon programme focussed on cardiovascular disease. It kicked off with a talk by Jaime Borjas-Howard, research physician in the clotting division of the UMCG, in which he outlined the PREDICT study. PREDICT investigates the risk of venous thrombosis in the Dutch HIV population and data collection for this study is carried out in collaboration with SHM.

Next, Shula Grivell, SHM’s protocols group coordinator, talked about myocardial infarction, medication, related conditions and procedures. In the coming period, myocardial infarction is to be the focus of quality control efforts, whereby data monitors (supported by data collectors) or quality control staff identify missed comorbidities, based on flags such as comedication. Shula’s talk was complemented with the discussion of a number of relevant cases, guided by data monitor Monika Raethke.

The day ended with an intervision session led by another data monitor, Dorinda Bergsma, during which focus groups discussed various types of data, quality control checks and fibroscans.

Overall, it was a successful review day that provided the data collectors with new insights and inspiration to continue their excellent work.