Category: Experience

Public involvement in health research: what it’s like, what I’ve learned, and why it matters

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Interview with Louise Ting, Member of the Centre for Academic Primary Care Patient and Public Involvement Steering Group

Louise Ting has been involved in service delivery and health research from a patient and public perspective for over six years. She has a passion for ensuring that patient and public involvement (PPI) is done properly and is meaningful both for researchers and for public contributors. Louise is a member of the PPI Steering Group at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol.

How did you find out about public involvement in research?

I first heard about public involvement when there was a large-scale commissioning exercise in Bristol for procuring the next set of mental health services in the city. They were asking people who had used services in the past to give their views and help assess the different bids by potential providers.

There were lots … Read more

Struggling to write? Start your own writers’ retreat!

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by Dr Jessica Watson
NIHR Doctoral Senior Clinical Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@drjessicawatson

 

Have you ever planned to do some writing, only to find yourself distracted by emails and ‘urgent’ tasks? Do you find you have a growing list of unpublished papers and grant proposals to write? Does it feel as if there is never enough time to get going with your writing?

As academics, writing is arguably our most important task. The mantra ‘publish or perish’ is not just a matter of prestige and a means to academic career progression. Nor is it simply about keeping our University rankings within the Research Excellence Framework. It is an ethical imperative.

Most medical research is funded either through taxpayers’ money or through charitable donations and relies on the trust and goodwill of voluntary research participants. This is both a privilege and responsibility. We must ensure that money … Read more

How we learned to love doing workshops

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by Jessica Roy
Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@DV_Bristol

The prospect of running a three-hour conference workshop can provoke anxiety even for the most seasoned conference-goer. Last month, I was a member of the IRIS+ research team, led by Dr Eszter Szilassy, that attended and presented a workshop at the Second European Conference of Domestic Violence in Porto, Portugal.

The conference brings together researchers, practitioners and policy makers from all corners of the globe to discuss, debate and exchange knowledge regarding domestic violence and abuse (DVA).

For context, the IRIS+ project is a training and intervention programme to support clinicians (GPs and nurses) to identify, document and refer female and male victims and perpetrators of DVA, as well as their children, to our dedicated specialist support service.

Before presenting, we had concerns that our workshop might not attract an audience, partly because we thought our topic … Read more

Worried about asking people to take part in research? Don’t be!

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by Dr Alison Gregory
Research Fellow (Traumatised and Vulnerable Populations), Senior Research Associate
Centre for Academic Primary Care
@AlisonGregory73

When I first became a health researcher, I felt that people would see taking part in research as a bother, a pain, or a waste of their time and that, by association, they would see me as akin to a nuisance caller, intent on coercing them into some unwanted activity. Thankfully, after 10 years doing research, it’s become apparent to me that this is far from the truth.

For a start, the tentativeness with which most of the researchers I know proceed as they recruit participants is anything but a hard-sell. In fact, due to necessarily stringent ethics and governance processes and practices, strict eligibility criteria, and a healthy dose of ‘only wanting to do what’s best for people’, we are possibly more in danger of being talked out of taking … Read more

Insights from the Oxford International Primary Care Research Leadership Programme

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by Dr Alyson Huntley
Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol
and
Dr Sarah Tonkin-Crine
Health Psychologist
Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

Two individuals are supported by the NIHR School for Primary Care Research (NIHR SPCR) to attend the Oxford Leadership Programme every year. This year researchers Drs Alyson Huntley from the Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol and Sarah Tonkin-Crine, from the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford attended the first week of events at St Hughs’ College, Oxford.

As cohort#12 of the International Primary Care Research Leadership Programme we were lucky to stay at St Hugh’s College, Oxford during a very hot and sunny week in July. After arriving at the college on Sunday afternoon we were given our timetable and a list of our cohort members spanning the UK, Catalonia and … Read more

Confessions of a NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellow

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by Dr Lesley Wye
Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Academic Primary Care

 

For 25 years, I have been a frustrated researcher. Like many, I came into the field of research to make a difference. But as the years passed, I realised that research had little influence on healthcare policy making or practice. I wanted to do something, so in 2009 I applied for a NIHR post-doctoral fellowship to skill up research teams to make a bigger impact. The feedback on my (unsuccessful) application was that researchers just had to publish in the BMJ and things would change (if only!).

Imagine my delight when a few short years later, the NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellowship scheme was launched. Its aim was to create a “cadre of knowledge mobilisers”, proficient both in the practice and research of knowledge mobilisation (or ways of sharing knowledge). In 2014, I became one of them.… Read more

Safety-netting advice: my experience as an Academic Foundation Programme doctor

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by Dr Peter Edwards
Research Associate/Academic Foundation Year 2 doctor
Centre for Academic Primary Care

One in a Million logo

 

 

 

 

Patients can deteriorate rapidly.

I know this from working in both general practice and as a hospital doctor in A&E.

During the early stages of an illness it can be difficult for even the most experienced healthcare professionals to determine whether a patient has a minor self-limiting illness or is harbouring a more serious condition. In addition, growing problems such as antibiotic resistance and multimorbidity mean that sometimes even when a doctor makes a correct diagnosis, patients do not always get better with the first round of treatment and may require further medical help.

We cannot, and it is not clinically appropriate, to admit everyone to hospital to observe them until they feel 100% better.

That is why it is important that healthcare professionals provide patients with safety-netting advice. Safety-netting … Read more