Wrapping up for Christmas and preparing for the new year

Christmas is coming close, and the EST team has been busy as usual up to the last minute. All the activities in the last two weeks mirror the work of the whole semester – both in terms of sizzling discussions, variety of tasks, meetings across continents and effective team work.

Do you ever wonder how the EST team keeps up with weekly meetings despite being spread between different parts of Norway, Australia and visiting stays in London, the US or any other place with an internet connection? Well, it usually looks like this:

Skype has been incredible reliable, whereas the greatest challenge has been the time differences. In good EST team spirit, everybody takes turns in getting up very early or staying up late at night in order to keep in touch when needed. Email, Slack and Dropbox are some of our other digital tools we rely on every day to make our international research possible. 

Here are some of the highlights from the last weeks work:

•  Åse has submitted the revised protocol for the Cochrane review which is now going to the next step of internal review.
•  Linn has recently submitted an article for the Norwegian Journal of speech-language pathology about the SLPs practice with stuttering in Norway.
• Hilde and Elaina are screening the papers for the Prospero article, and Hilde is in lead for the preparation of the manuscript.
• Kari-Anne, Linn and Melanie are working on the ethics applications.
• Elisabeth and Linn are planning the survey for the health care nurses.
• The whole team has continuous discussions on the design and recruitment for the intervention study, which will be the most important decisions for the start of next year and the next working package of the project.

Despite the work load, the Oslo-located part of the team met and enjoyed a lovely pre-Christmas lunch at Linns home where also Ane and Karoline from Statped were invited. We cheered for all the members of the team as well as co-operators, celebrating everything the team has achieved this year with delicious food from around the world and typical Norwegian Christmas beers and sweets.

The EST team is looking forward to 2019 and has great expectations based on the project plan. We would also like to thank you all; you are our readers and followers at the projects home page, blog and Facebook group  - sharing  interest in stuttering, experience, knowledge and valuable feedback.

We wish you all a peaceful Christmas time, holiday season and a happy New Year!

For the EST team, Melanie Kirmess