Testimonials from WASP online, Feb 2024
My opinion on the richness of knowledge and experience shared remains as when we last spoke on Tuesday morning. Direct insights of editors from prominent journals is a luxury; not to mention the shortcuts given to run statistical tests more efficiently without relying on additional software that compromises the speed at which personal PCs run. Tuesday's session was very stats heavy - a welcome focus given that the last time I had covered stats in some detail was for my Masters degree…I did leave WASP with several golden nuggets that I am keen on applying as I continue to read for the M.Phil./Ph.D. More imminently, I feel more confident now to address publishing my scoping review protocol (I've been procrastinating this for months for fear of inevitable rejection). I hope to present findings from my Scoping Review as a poster presentation … your pointers regarding poster design choices will certainly come in handy…I'll certainly be recommending WASP to colleagues.
Thank you for the course. The information will be useful for the current audit and case report projects I am working on, and also for my future studies. Much appreciated. Thanks especially for the very practical Excel sheets which will save a lot of time.
Would like to thank all the staff especially Amanda who always took the time to respond to all my emails.
Very informative course that I will definitely recommend to colleagues. Many important points discussed are not brought to our attention during medical school/foundation years, and the experiences shared by each speaker were invaluable.
An excellent course on the whole. Thank you.

Independent review by the Saudi Journal of Anaesthesia on WASP online, Feb 2023
WASP conducted on February 2023. 1. The organization was outstanding, 2. All speakers present informative and important lectures with different levels but most of them was excellent 3. Dr. Victor have done a massive efforts in creating data analysis using EXCEL instead of SPSS. From my side, as beginner and online workshop, I recommend to distribute the topics over more days, especially statistics 5. A short test can be done immediately after each day to help in more understanding.

Testimonials from WASP online, Feb 2023
Dear Prof Grech, Firstly, I would like to thank you and the team as the course was useful and informative. The insight from the lecturers and especially yourself is invaluable.
Very very useful course and excellent presentation. I kindly suggest to add a brief powerpoint to explain the stats better in words rather than just on excel. Thank you and keep it up
Overall I really enjoyed this course and have benefitted greatly from attending, the speakers were very clear and all talks kept to their time limit, having the majority of handouts available was very beneficial and easier to make notes on. The work sheets will come in very handy and I look forward to using them in my work, you can tell a lot of time and effort has been put into them and I appreciate that they have been made available for us all to use/keep.
I think length was sufficient to ensure all points are clearly delivered.
I think 3 days was a perfect balance.
Thank you for the productive event.
It was interesting, still need to practice and research further on best ways to do it as even the tabulation plotting need to be set right for analysis. For sure it will help me. Even at work to analyse certain trends and data and change operations where necessary.
I found it very interesting and very beneficial. The presentations were very well thought out and I felt we were not overloaded with too much information (as can sometimes happen), it helped that everyone stuck to time and I felt this allowed the course to flow more. All of the presenters were clear and offered a lot of insight and personal experience. The handouts/spreadsheets will come in very useful and I look forward to having the time to have a play with them, using some test data from my centre.The next stage in my personal development/current role will be to get more of an understanding on Statistics for medical papers, with this in mind this course has helped to give me an overview of the tests we can/should be using and hopefully with time and using the handouts provided I can further enhance my skills and knowledge. I have already informed our Clinical registrars that they should attend an upcoming WASP course as I truly fell they will benefit from it, it may also iron out some of the issues I currently have when they request data from me for their Audit projects.

Testimonials from WASP online, May 2022
I initially felt the lecture on the statistics was a bit fast-paced but the excel files were excellent because they provide clear and have easy to follow guides for carrying out the analysis. I love how the excel guides were also organised by topics. This is the best statistics training I have had so far. Big ups to the organizers.
I look forward to using what I have learnt to Publish Papers, Articles and thesis, as well as to Speaking at Future WASP Programs...
WASP is interactive and practical.
WASP is very educative and has built my capacity as an early researcher.
Well organised/great lectures
WASP has been a very informative course. The whole team was very approachable in taking questions and were very comprehensive in their answers. Will recommend to others.
Extremely well organized and informative - even though I still feel I have a lot to learn
I became more familiar with the concepts

Testimonials from WASP online, February 2022
Overall great course, will recommend to colleagues.
I was very happy with the statistics component of the course. This is something very unique to the WASP course. data analysis can be a major stumbling block to writing a paper. I am more confident in analysing my data now.
Very good workshop. I did enjoy. It will affect my practice and research work. 👍
Really good course. Learnt a lot. If ideal maybe it was live, would not have been as awkward with regards to questions, albeit understanding of current Covid situation.
Thank you for organizing this. I learnt a lot.
Thank you :)
This was a very good and interesting course.
Wouldn’t change a thing
3 days is fine. All topics are relevant
The workshop was well packed with many equally important lectures. I won't take one out.
Excel analysis lectures are the most valuable.

Testimonials from WASP online, October 2021
WASP my love where have you been all this time? We should have dated 10 years ago!' Just absoflipping brilliant! Keep up the passion guys!
I wish I done this before my masters, it would have saved me a lot of trouble when analysing data. I highly recommend for those pursuing in developing their academic and research career.
Very good course.
Very friendly staff, keeping it informal and not daunting to interact.
Short and to the point.
Well done. The course was well organised. The speakers were all well prepared. I liked especially the quiz and the time spent revising the statistics at the last part of the course. Thank you for providing us with the information, materials and tools that I’m sure we will all find useful in our future scientific writing!!
Thank you for sharing your vast knowledge with us.
WASP has been very helpful so far- particularly the obtuse statistics which I honestly had no clue to tackle, as well as this most recent talk on Mendeley.
Very useful and I’m already drafting some ideas with my colleague who’s attending the course with me.
I am new to this world so a lot of things are useful. Particularly about oral and poster presentations, writing an abstract, basic stats and this morning’s talk. What I struggle with is to choose carefully which journal to submit my paper in.......thanks to WASP I learnt literature review can be my first clue.

Testimonials from WASP online, April 2021
I like the pragmatic approach you bring to the task. Get them to work with the tools at hand, and then they can move on to better tools later. I was intrigued and interested.
I have completed the feedback form but since it is supposed to be anonymous I just wanted to say how useful and helpful the course was, wish I had done it a year ago. I would really like to recommend it to my colleagues in the UK. Could you please let me know when your next course is planned and I will promote it to the general paediatric and paediatric cardiology groups I am involved in.
It was really a wonderful experience for me! You did a great job in organizing and running the course 👏. I feel that these courses were great for everyone! Thank you very much! I will definitely recommend it to junior colleagues! Best wishes.
Thank you so much for the nice exercises. We have a fair understanding so far. I found it is amazing your lectures like you share with us a lot of tips and trick … great course… Thank you so much! Learnt a lot! Much more to learn.
Thanks. Will cascade among colleagues and friends,
All the lectures are very appropriate which provide me basic knowledge about everything related to writing a scientific paper. Moreover, all the lecturers are very friendly and enthusiastic, not only giving presentation but also share with me experiences in reality and useful advice what should do or should not do in order to get success in writing and publishing scientific papers. I would present my sincere thanks to all of the lecturers who take part in this special Cardio WASP course 2021. I would strongly recommend the course for my colleagues.
It is great that the citation was covered during these courses.
End of the lectures I was very clear with how to do a test (thanks to macros enabled sheets) … overall it was an excellent course. Many thanks for the teachings.
Well done, definitely will recommend to others.
Very useful and enjoyable course. Wish I had done it sooner in my career, pivot table in particular would have saved me a lot of time and effort.
Excellent course - absolutely essential and should be part of medical school lectures!
Thank you again for the wonderful course. 
I really enjoyed this course. In the beginning I felt a bit "anxious" about scientific writing as I haven´t had any real "Collisions" with that part of medicine. Now anxiety changed to curiosity...science made accessible...thanks for the efforts!!
I thank you again for one of the most interesting courses I've had the pleasure to experience. 
I have written an email to the council and educational committee members with my high recommendations of these courses for the juniors. Thank you very much again!

From the Evening Stats Sessions, Feb 2021 organised by the Association of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgeons of Malta
On behalf of the AOTSM and the Orthopaedic department I would like to express our sincerest gratitude for all the time and effort you devoted to the sessions. I have spoken with the other HSTs and the feedback I received was extremely positive. I hope we will all be able to use this knowledge to improve the quality of research within our Department further. 

Testimonials from WASP online, February 2021
We really enjoyed it and feel that it is very informative, especially in an age when most clinicians engage in medical research. It was very meticulously prepared and was very thorough - those Excel sheets are priceless! And to be honest with you it served to inspire us to work on data we had previously collected. So thank you.
Great course overall with very experienced lecturers, keep it up!
Ideally more revision of the excel sheets and more practice with the sheets. Last day’s quiz was great. More of such quizzes would be great!
I think it was divided appropriately as it's quite intense
I would leave it over 3 days since there is alot of information to take in and it was spread out well. Also I felt quite lost in the statistics parts on the 1st 2 days but on the 3rd day everything made sense.
Perfect as it is. Everything ties together in my opinion.
Very informative and helpful. Appreciated the sessions about building a proposal.
Once again a big thank you. I feel that in an age of research any physician should have the knowledge that is included in this course.
The course was amazing, the excel sheets provided are guided within themselves, and the presentation contain the essential points covered during the different sessions. the speakers were also super great at communication, were very engaging and to the point. The only weakness I felt was the intensity of the course. 
I cannot thank you enough for such an informative course - it was intense but totally worth it! I now feel I have the skills (which need more practice but I will hopefully get there eventually) to tackle research. This has inspired me to work harder on studies which I have started and to push myself to work even harder to publish! The platform was also a very friendly one and despite being at a very early stage in my career, I still felt comfortable and well supported. Many thanks - I will DEFINITELY recommend this course.
Have not yet grasped what type of test is best to use yet, however all is well explained in the documents provided so some revision will help clear that out. Perfect course in every way. Keep up the great work! Will definitely keep on recommending it!
 
Interesting testimonial dated Jan 2020
I believe I did WASP 10 years ago [in 2010]. I changed profession a long time ago … I work on varied projects - mostly trying to satisfy curiosities and hunches in a risk-managed way. Some people would call me 'entrepreneur'… so haven't had the opportunity to use it [WASP] to its fullest extent. I still find it helps me understand a paper's methods and conclusions better when I'm educating myself about a subject and need to go to the source of the 'latest' research.

Testimonials from WASP online, November 2020
This course gave me a lot of skills.
Thank you for such an informative and immersive course.
I believe it was very well organized, and allowed interaction with participants, even though the course was virtual this year.
Very good course overall, well done! :)

Testimonials from WASP in Malta, October 2019
Excellent course, punctual, keep it up!
Very informative! Well done.
We appreciate your availability to provide help, even with our own research. I love how Prof Grech kept the lecturers on their toes in an effort to keep within schedule, which he managed 90% of the time.

Testimonials from WASP in Malta, February 2018
Overall, WASP is a good course that I would recommend to my colleagues.
I really enjoyed this course and the speakers were all very professional. During my Masters degree I had learnt all about statistics and how to write a scientific paper, so some lectures were a good recap for me but still I learnt many aspects which I never knew before. This course has made me feel more confident on how I should write a paper. It has also encouraged me to try and publish my paper with another journal, as mine was recently rejected. The lectures were straight to the point and I liked the fact that there was a mixture of lessons and not a lot of statistics in a row for example. This helped me to stay focused. The venue was good also, comfortable and central. Food was good as well. I highly recommend this course and I am glad I attended as I feel that it will help me in my career. The speakers were very motivational too and I wish to follow their footsteps and continue to increase my knowledge further. Well done!

Testimonials from WASP in Bahrain, April 2018
Amazing, Strongly recommend.
Great course with big benefit!! Thankx.
Very Professional Course, enhance my knowledge on how to write my thesis.

Testimonials from WASP in Malta, October 2017
It was intense and tiring ... it was unique on the sense that I rarely see so much passion injected in a course. It had a heart and a soul, which to me is inspiring. The pride you take in your work is also evident, for which you have my respect and admiration ... this was a breath of fresh air. It was also the most holistic course I have ever attended, tackling the topic from every possible angle and providing practical and applicable knowledge, not just vague theories. The Excel sheets were a very kind gift. It will definitely result in a higher turnover of published works. Being a fantasy, science fiction and James Bond buff, I also derived great enjoyment from the presentations :) Thanks for these illuminating 3 days.
The course is very enlightening. It is giving me a 'window' on research and how it is done, which will allow me to appreciate papers even better, whether I end up doing research myself or not. From today on I will be appreciating values, tests and graphs better :) Looking forward to the last day. especially the Stats sessions ;)
Thank you for an excellent course. It certainly makes a post grad research degree looks much less daunting now! Content was superb but I also enjoyed it - a nice break from wards outpatients procedures etc! Keep up the excellent work.
No time was wasted in between presentations. Very useful excel tips. Thank you!
Excellent overall - keep up the good work.
Thank you for organizing such a course. Some topics (eg. statistics) are difficult to understand and now I feel I have a better understanding. The presentations were great. I am sure it will help me in my masters dissertation! Well done and keep it up.
Very helpful and practical information.
Very good course. Should have done it before. I think it should be promoted more to trainees in their early careers.
Thanks for all that you put into the making and delivering of this course. It was very instructive both for the purpose for which it was made - ie writing and presenting a scientific paper. It also helped me personally come in touch with what is happening within the medical field with regards to training, research and presenting of gathered information. I look forward to sharing similar opportunities in the future.
It’s nice when you go to a course and come out knowing much more than before you started, company was great too! Unfortunately in medicine I found that no one really teaches you about research - but then that’s why you’re there !! Take care.
Thanks for the excellent course!

Testimonials from WASP in Malta, February 2017
Additional time spent on the practical session might have been useful - other than that I found the course extremely useful and have already been recommending it to numerous colleagues!
Appropriate length to assimilate material. Very inspiring, engaging, motivating, and helpful course! Will definitely help me a lot and will recommend to others!
A great experience. Thank you.
This was an excellent course. I found it excellent for the following reasons: 1) most speakers had vast experience in writing scientific papers and are mostly professors or with PhDs; 2) the course covered most of the issues which one has to deal with when conducting scientific research and issues were presented in a very practical manner; 3) the course provided excellent material (statistical applications) which can be applied immediately to our own work. I would consider enhancing the statistical sessions by giving more time to students to work with statistical applications. … Thank you for this opportunity.
I felt it could also have been slightly longer as there was a wealth of information given.
Excellent…thanks for sending the resources!

Testimonials from WASP in London, January 2017
I would highly recommend this course. Perhaps on the last day the candidates could be encouraged to bring in their own dataset and practice various statistics under supervision. This should be on the list of courses recommended by Deaneries/Colleges.
I appreciated the fact that lectures were mixed so that it was difficult to lose attention (not all stat together, not all writing together etc.).

From WASP courses prior to 2016
The speakers presented sterling talks, no beating about the bush. This 3-day intensive course must become an annual appointment. MAF
Some short comments about the seminar: 1. Well organised. 2. Ideal for students. 3. Very informative. Thanking you once again for your initiative. DG
Great presentations. Very informative. The course was really great. PO
Just wanted to say thank you for a very helpful course on writing a scientific paper! Very well organised and very informative. I will definitely recommend it to colleagues. Thank you once again. KT
Informative and comprehensive, excellent speakers. Encouraged us new ones to venture in the field. Presence of a mix of professions in the audience enriched the experience. Thanks very much it was a great experience and I look forward to future courses organised both by yourself and MIME. GB
Thank you for a well organised and enjoyable seminar. AM
I would like to thank you for your organisation and leadership of the conference. It was truly an entirely positive experience. Please find some short comments: Targeted content, well-planned and executed. Excellent speakers, clear and relevant delivery. Exposure of medical students to such concepts at an earlier stage may be beneficial. EC
Eye-opener and inspirational! Intensive. Thanking you. AF
First of all thank you again for taking initiative in organising this event. The following is my feedback: Excellent pre-conference communication and resource pack. Strict time keeping. Interactive session with laptops. JV
Very informative talks. Lovely location and setting. Intense and tiring schedule. Good choice of speakers. Thanks for the lovely experience! RVB
The course was professionally prepared! The time allocated to lectures was perfect. Coffee and lunch break periods were adequate. Practical sessions with laptops was very useful! Lecturers addressed their points perfectly to be understandable by all. Thank you for this useful course and I hope there will be more similar courses in the coming future! Regards. MS
Sincere thanks for the seminar. As a final year PhD student, the presentations gave me a perfect insight of what is needed for successful publications. Keep it up - I will recommend such a seminar if it's repeated in the future. Well done. MC
The conference was very relevant to my needs. I will definitely encourage my colleagues to attend next year's conference especially those following post-graduate studies. Thank you for opening the conference to all professionals. The material covered is very scarce to find elsewhere especially if one is not a medical student/doctor or employed/studying with the University of Malta. VA
I found this course very well organised and extremely helpful. I will definitely recommend it to my colleagues. One suggestion I could make would be that maybe the course could be held in a more central location. Having said that, travelling a bit more for three days does not put one off from attending a course you would like to attend. EVZ
Carissimo Victor, Il programma è ben fatto,molto utile, prattico ....complimenti!!!!! Un abbraccio forte! DN