Below are some brief descriptions of the experience of being a Cochrane Heart author/editor/peer reviewer/author in residence.
Mehul Srivastava, author in residence September 2019 - January 2020:
For a written transcript of the interview, please click here.
Mehul is an honorary research fellow with University College London and is currently an Emergency Medicine trainee in Melbourne Australia. In September 2019 she joined us at Cochrane Heart as an Author in Residence, visiting the office weekly to collaborate on authoring a Systematic Review. In this interview we ask her about the benefits of the experience, how it has helped her ongoing work as a clinician and a researcher, and her advice for anyone considering becoming an Author in Residence with Cochrane.
Harry Boardman, author and editor:
I am a clinical cardiologist and will shortly take up a consultant position at Milton Keynes university Hospital. I started my first Cochrane review in 2013 "Hormone therapy for preventing cardiovascular disease in post-menopausal women". It was part of a 6 month fellowship I undertook at the UK Cochrane Centre (UKCC) in Oxford. I was the first ever fellow there and during my time I undertook this review update, learnt about the social media activities and wrote the odd blog. With the help of several people across Cochrane the review got flagged to the Science and Media Centre in London and I was invited to give a press conference on the findings, something I had never done before. This was certainly a learning experience and it led to some recorded TV and live radio interviews. This was a fascinating experience and certainly one I did not expect. I am currently contributing to another review at the other end of the cardiology disease spectrum, " Mechanical assist devices for acute cardiogenic shock". I have been an editor for the heart group for the past 2 years. The role is not onerous and it gives me valuable insight and experience into a range of other reviews.
Enca Martin-Rendon, author and editor:
As a Cochrane author, the help and advice that I have received from the Cochrane Heart Group has always been excellent. This includes the care they take in publicizing the Cochrane reviews widely.
But 2015 has strengthened the relationship between us (authors) and the Cochrane Heart editorial team even more. We were awarded an NIHR Cochrane Incentive grant to update one of our reviews. This mammoth work would not have been possible without the extraordinary help of the Cochrane Heart editorial team. They have managed to engage authors, internal and external peer-reviewers and production editors in a timely manner, so the update of our review saw the light on 30 September 2015.
The Cochrane Heart Group aims to be the centre for evidence-based decision-making in the field of cardiovascular medicine. And we are very pleased to be part of it.
Cheers!

