Interview with FLOURISH research coordinator, Rebecca Seymour

We spoke to Rebecca Seymour, a research coordinator at FLOURISH (D’Souza Lab), about her education journey and her passion for research. Read more about Rebecca’s work at the lab and find out what advice she gives to aspiring researchers.

Tell us about your education journey. What made you want to pursue a career in research?

My journey wasn’t very streamlined! I did my undergraduate degree in kinesiology at McMaster. After that, I worked at the McMaster Children’s Obesity Clinic for a year. I really enjoyed interacting with the children and their parents, and I liked the work I was doing, but I wanted to get more hands-on care experience. So, I decided to apply for the accelerated nursing program at Mac.

During this time, I was frustrated with my experience in ward nursing. I found it difficult to provide the level of care I wanted with the limited resources we had on the ward. I decided to pursue a Master’s degree with the goal of researching ways to improve nursing processes and interventions. I ended up focusing on several different areas of research throughout my degrees.

What kinds of topics has your research focused on?

During my Master’s, I conducted a study focused on a home intervention program for at-risk young mothers called the Nurse Family Partnership. It’s such a fantastic program – it’s still being expanded today. As part of the program, nurses care for women who have experienced intimate partner violence, as well as their children, from 20 weeks to two years old. They also provide education to help mothers have safe and healthy pregnancies and develop skills for childcare. I was interested in learning more about nurses’ experiences in the program, so my research focused on understanding the nurse-client relationship.

After my Master’s, I did a PhD that focused on the postpartum experiences and needs of women in the UK who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). Since FGM is illegal in the UK, mothers that were visiting FGM clinics were being treated as victims and potential abusers at the same time. It was an interesting dynamic to explore, since the system was trying to help women, but may not have understood the population well enough to be able to truly help them.

Tell us about your work at FLOURISH (D’Souza Lab) on the CanOSS project.

I completed my post-doctoral fellowship with Rohan on the Canadian Obstetric Survey System (CanOSS) project. As part of the project, I conduct interviews with healthcare practitioners who work in maternity units across Canada – including registered nurses, midwives and medical doctors – to learn more about their experiences and perspectives on collecting data related to severe maternal morbidity (SMM), or unexpected negative pregnancy events.

The overall goal of CanOSS is to create a centralized SMM surveillance system for Canada, which will ensure that data about these events can be collected and analyzed to identify trends, develop healthcare interventions and ultimately improve outcomes for patients. The interviews I conduct really allow us to go into depth with practitioners about their current process for tracking SMM events and ways they think this system can be improved.

There is a lot of diversity across Canada in terms of how maternity units collect data related to SMM. Several provinces, like Ontario and British Columbia, collect province-wide data. However, none of these provinces share data with each other. CanOSS will help us ensure all of Canada is included in our efforts to prevent SMM events and improve pregnancy and post-partum care.

We’re currently approaching the next phase of the project, which involves working with provincial representatives on data sharing agreements and exploring techniques for sharing data anonymously.

Tell us about your experience working with students at FLOURISH. Why are students an important part of the lab?

I love students! I think it comes from my being a student for so long. As experienced researchers, we can become very set in our ways, and students bring new and fresh perspectives to our work. Students are always coming up with interesting questions.

Part of my mission as a member of the FLOURISH lab is to ensure that students don’t feel alone in their studies. I know the struggle that students go through during their Master’s and PhDs. Even though you’re surrounded by other students in your program, your project is unique and you are the only one doing it, so it can feel very isolating.

Everyone is invited to our bi-weekly FLOURISH lab meetings, where students can present their research and discuss anything they want – like their research progress and any challenges they may be facing – and then hear from other students and members of our lab.

What kinds of experiences can students gain as members of FLOURISH?

The FLOURISH Lab offers students a wealth of valuable and applicable research experience and the opportunity to work with those who are similarly passionate about advancing pregnancy and post-partum research. We have a great team: Rohan is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Maternal Health, Rizwana is an experienced quantitative researcher and I’m an experienced qualitative researcher. We currently support undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of programs and we’re always looking for new staff members and students to join our team.

What is some advice you would give to students who are thinking of pursuing a career in research?

You have to love what you do. Research is more of a lifestyle than a job. You’re moving mountains and doing it one pebble at a time.

There are many aspects of research that might call out to you. I love methods; for me, finding out the best way to answer a question is like solving a puzzle. Overall, I think you need to have a strong drive and desire to help change things on a societal level. What better goal is there than to help the most people you can while you’re on this planet? It makes your work worthwhile.