Mr Apostolos Fakis

Faculty: Education, Health and Sciences

School: School of Health and Social Care

Subject Area: Mental Health and Therapeutic Practice

I enrolled within the faculty of Education, Health and Sciences Faculty at the University of Derby in January 2008 as a part time PhD research student. I worked with Professor Chris Brannigan (Mentor of Studies), Dr. Michael Townend (Director of Studies) and Dr Rachel Hilliam (Supervisor) on developing new quantitative methods for analysing the qualitative information from interviews.

Professional interests

I am working as full time Medical Statistician in the Research and Development Department at Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. My role is to provide help and support to all medical staff (nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, consultants) designing projects which are related to health areas like Renal, Rheumatology, Hand Unit, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Palliative Care, Children's Services, Rehabilitation, Gastroenterology, Surgical Services and other specialisms within the Directorate of Medicine. I am involved in the planning and conduct of Randomised Control Trials following Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), case-control, longitudinal, cohort, cross-over, questionnaire, evaluation, commercial and non commercial studies. I am also responsible for estimating the sample size, doing the randomisation and constructing the data collection forms for any research approved from the Research and Development Office. I am also providing statistical analysis, interpretation of results and reports of those studies. Finally I am helping the investigators to produce a statistically correct paper ready for publication on peer reviewed journal.

Research interests

As I have a full time job as a medical statistician I am doing my PhD part-time. My research interest as a Research Student lies on the development of new quantitative methods for refining the primary results derived from the qualitative analysis. Many researchers, especially in the mental health area, prefer to collect qualitative data for answering the primary question of their project. This happens due to more theoretical primary questions they want to answer or because they would like to develop new theory or themes. However nobody has tried so far to analyse the qualitative results derived from the interviews using quantitative methods for answering their primary question. The triangulation approach will be used for combining those two methods. This approach will neither be used as confirmation or validation of the two methods - qualitative (A) and quantitative (B) - nor for replicating the results the researchers found with one of the two methods. In case that the two components of the replication lead us to an identical result then there is no problem and triangulation becomes another term for such replication. On the other hand when we view an object (phenomenon C) from two perspectives (two methods A and B) then we expect to find something new as a result or to observe the same phenomenon from different angles so as to produce more well-rounded theory. Following a literature review I haven't found any publication which is dealing with the real combination / mixture of the qualitative and quantitative methods. In this initial stage I am planning to use the final themes that Gary Robinson has produced through the qualitative analysis from his project on "The parental and grandparental perceptions relating to causality, treatment and support of a child or young person with a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)". Those themes will be used for developing proper scoring system which will quantify them. My research project is currently in progress and any contribution, comment or advice from other researchers is highly welcome and acceptable.

Membership of professional bodies and advisory committees

Graduate Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society.
Vice-Chair of Derbyshire Research Ethics Committee
Reviewer of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) program.

Recent Conferences

June 7-11, 2008 at ASCRS: Annual Meeting and Tripartite Meeting. Emma Collins, V Harding, Apostolos Fakis, P Patel, GM Tierney, JR Reynolds, D. Semerano and J Lund. "Colorectal surgeons and biomedical scientists improve lymph node harvest in colorectal cancer".

July 2007 at RSS conference at York: Apostolos Fakis, Robert Shaw, Jyothi Murthy, Ping Hoo, and Joe Darné. "Modification of a Health related Quality of Life Questionnaire for women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and its relevance in various presentations of PCOS"

Additional Interests and Activities

I really love playing handball. I started at the age of 12 in Greece and I am currently playing in UK as I am member of the Nottingham Handball Club since 2005. I also like playing and watching football. I am also keen on traveling around England and Europe.

Undergraduate qualifications

• 4 Years BSc in Statistics, Department of Statistics, Athens University of Economics and Business

Postgraduate qualifications

• MSc in Medical Statistics, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Lancaster University

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