EGPRN Fellowship Interview with Jelena Danilenko

The EGPRN offers fellowship program for primary care researchers who are early in their research careers, and who would like to be mentoring during a Zoom-based practical course on research skills.

Here is the interview with one of the current fellows, Jelena Danilenko. We hope the interview gives inspiration and encourages those who plan to apply to the program.


- How has your experience been on the EGPRN fellowship programme?
I gained great experience during the fellowship. It was an excellent opportunity, during the training process, to create and implement a large international project from scratch. As part of the Fellowship, we met about once every three weeks. Each Zoom meeting was very well planned by prof. Michael Harris and we also prepared materials for each meeting.

- How has the fellowship supported your professional growth?
This Fellowship was very important for me. Until now, I did not have much experience in creating qualitative research. Michael guided us step by step from a qualitative research question to a protocol and writing a full paper. During this fellowship, I made new colleagues - now friends, with whom we continue contact in life. As well as we are planning next projects together. And what would be very important for my future scientific activity, I got a supervisor for my PhD.

- What has been particularly memorable?
It was the first meeting on Zoom, when there was unreal excitement, not knowing what would happen next and in what format it would continue. But Michael made everyone feel free, without unnecessary anxiety, because there were no wrong answers to the questions, and there were no incorrect questions from our side. Michael accepted and explained everything.

- What would be your message to future EGPRN fellows?
Just do it. If you don't even have experience in research, go to the Fellowship and learn everything, the main thing is desire. Michael is very patient :)

You can find more about the EGPRN Fellowship here.