CDA Essentials 2018 • Volume 5 • Issue 2

32 | 2018 | Issue 2 I ssues and P eople However, we are seeing more excellent qualitative studies in dentistry, published in oral and general health journals. At McGill, we have a number of faculty members who primarily do qualitative research and train their graduate students in qualitative methodologies. For instance, Dr. Nora Makansi, adjunct professor, recently used discourse analysis to understand the conceptions of childhood in some leading pediatric dentistry textbooks. 1 She examined how children were being characterized, and how these conceptualizations affected models of care. Another colleague, Dr. Christophe Bedos, associate professor, uses qualitative methodologies to understand access to care for people living in poverty, people who are deaf, and people who use wheelchairs. Along with Dr. Bedos and Dr. Azadeh Mostajer Haqiqi, we looked at parents’ experiences seeking care for their children. 2 Can you provide some specific examples of where qualitative methods have had a positive impact on dentistry? I recently supervised Dr. Mark Keboa, a dentist from Cameroon, about an ethnographic project on the oral health of humanitarian migrants (i.e., refugees and asylum seekers). His research focused on these groups’ understanding of oral health, and their experiences seeking services once in Canada. With this preliminary data, we have shown that migrants have important knowledge about how to care for their oral health, yet face serious barriers preventing them from accessing care once in Canada. Further, we found that participants had some useful ideas about how to help shape services and policy to better serve this population in Canadian health care. These data were used as a foundation for a recent successful submission to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; we will launch our new 3-year funded project in April 2018, which includes a clinical study on the oral health of humanitarian migrants in Quebec and Ontario. Do you think qualitative research complements other research methodologies used in the oral health and medical fields? Yes, and more people are realizing that. A couple of years ago, we set off a little Twitter storm that went global! We tweeted about a qualitative paper that had been submitted to the British Medical Journal ( BMJ ) and got rejected. The rejection letter was quite harsh and perpetuated some myths and misconceptions about qualitative research. We posted the letter on Twitter to see what people thought, and it launched this global conversation with hundreds of academics, responding to this rejection letter and to the issue of qualitative research in the health domain. As a result of this one tweet, we had the hashtag #bmjnoqual and over 70 academics came together and wrote an editorial that was published in the BMJ . 3 We do have a voice out there, but it’s not just us, it is also the community. The community cares about the power of this methodology to improve health, to listen to patients, and to go to the places where quantitative methods can’t go. Can practising Canadian dentists join MQHRG? Absolutely! Dentists can follow us through our website and Twitter. They can also be part of our listserv or if they’re in Montreal, they are more than welcome to join us. We announce our meetings publicly, and generally, they are open to everyone, unless we have a workshop and have to cap the workspace in the room. a References 1. Makansi N, Carnevale FA, Macdonald ME. The conceptualization of childhood in North American pediatric dentistry texts: A discursive case study analysis. Int J Paediatr Dent. 2018;28(2):189-97. 2. Mostajer Haqiqi A, Bedos C, Macdonald ME. The emergency department as a ‘last resort’: why parents seek care for their child's nontraumatic dental problems in the emergency room. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol. 2016;44(5):493-503. 3. Greenhalgh T, Annandale E, Ashcroft R, Barlow J, Black N, Bleakley A, et al. An open letter to The BMJ editors on qualitative research. BMJ. 2016 Feb 10;352:i563. To listen to an interview with Dr. Mary Ellen Macdonald, visit oasisdiscussions.ca/ 2018/01/30/qual Follow MQHRG on Twitter @mqhrg To join the group and listserv, contact Crystal Noronha at crystal.noronha@mcgill.ca Week 2 27.92 44.73 Least Squares Mean f o PercentReduction from Philips Sonicare Dia Oral-B 7000