As we begin a brand new year, we look back at the last 12 months and celebrate everything that the Trust has achieved with regards to Research and Development and look forward to the next 12 months...
As we begin a brand new year, we look back at the last 12 months and celebrate everything that the Trust has achieved with regards to Research and Development and look forward to the next 12 months...
At the start of 2017, The RD Showcase Working Group was set up with the aim of improving research awareness across the Trust aimed at staff, patients and the public. There have been monthly research campaigns, celebrations for International Clinical Trials Day, supporting the advertising of research studies, a research fair and of course this blog. This has certainly started to increase the general awareness of research within the Trust.
Research Link Practitioners were recruited from around the hospital, with the role of promoting a research positive culture throughout the Trust. This entails raising awareness of research and clinical trials amongst staff, students and patients within their clinical area.
The Clinical Research Unit (CRU) have been runners up for team of the year twice in the last 6 months as well as two CRU members of staff being runners up for employee of the month. This demonstrates the hard work, care and compassion that the team show to patients, volunteers and colleagues.
You may remember that in September The AME Oncology Team won the Research and Development award at the 2017 Make a Difference awards. This team was multidisciplinary and consisted of teams from the CRU, Radiopharmacy, Pharmacy, Oncology Research Team, Nuclear Medicine and Radiology. The successful completion of the study, ahead of schedule, has led to us being selected as a site for future studies.
The Consent 4 Consent Team has a new volunteer who joined us in November. Bob is a committed Trust Volunteer who has taken on the additional role of being a C4C Advocate. On Monday Afternoons you will find Bob in the Foyer distributing information about C4C and signing people up to the Trust’s valuable research database. In just under 2 months Bob has already signed up over 150 people to the database, which is an excellent achievement.
Figures
In the last 12 months, 3716 people consented into research studies across the Trust. The biggest recruiting study for 2017 was the Future Initiative who have recruited 556 participants – Well done to all involved!
A special thank you has to go to all of our patients and volunteers, who have given the #giftofresearch by taking part in clinical trials and other research studies over the 12 months. Without their support and involvement, medical advances would not be made. The NIHR have published a video to show the importance of research.
So, what’s in store for 2018?
Tune in to our January Blog to learn more...