Author Archives: Niroshan Siriwardena

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Despina Laparidou presents Scaling up PINCER at ISQua 2017

IMG_0923Despina Laparidou, Research Assistant at CaHRU, together with Antony Chuter, a patient representative for Scaling Up PINCER (pharmacist-led information technology intervention for reducing clinically important errors) recently attended the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) Conference at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London (1st – 4th October 2017) and presented the preliminary findings of the Scaling Up PINCER project, funded by the Health Foundation.

IMG_1639The Main Conference offered a combination of exciting plenaries, short oral presentations and longer themed sessions, while poster and e-poster presentations were also presented throughout the duration of the conference. One of the most interesting sessions was the “A Mile in My Shoes”. A Mile in My Shoes is an interactive shoe shop that invited delegates to “(literally) step into someone else’s shoes and embark on a mile-long physical, emotional and imaginative journey to see the world through their eyes”. The session involved listening to, while wearing their shoes at the same time, unique audio stories from people working within health and social care, sharing their experiences and showing the remarkable contribution and challenges faced by those working in, and using, our health and social care system.

IMG_1634Despina and Antony gave their presentation on the morning of Tuesday 3rd October during a session on “Health Foundation Improving Quality in Community Health Services” and was very well received by the audience. PINCER is a pharmacist-led information technology intervention for reducing clinically important errors in medication management in general practices and the study’s preliminary results show early indications of improvement in most of the study’s safety indicators for gastrointestinal bleed, stroke, heart failure and acute kidney injury, but not for the two asthma indicators. The session, chaired by Will Warburton from The Health Foundation, also showcased studies, such as the “Ophelia Project” on improving health literacy for vulnerable people in the community, and “Making Waves” on Promoting a positive experience for people with COPD.

The Conference came to an end with Wednesday’s plenary and the promise to meet again in 2018 for an even more exciting ISQua Conference in Malaysia!

By Despina Laparidou

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CaHRU newsletter (Summer 2017)

CaHRU_logotypeThe latest edition of the CaHRU Newsletter (Summer 2017) was published in September 2017. The newsletter presents the work of the research centre over the previous three months and includes articles from the CaHRU blog covering publications, conferences and funding. The newsletter is written by members of the CaHRU team and produced by Sue Bowler, CaHRU administrator.

[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2017/09/CaHRU-Newsletter-Summer-2017.pdf” responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]

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Spotlight on new ambulance performance measures

photo2italiccolourWORDSTwo key articles on development and prioritization of new ambulance performance measures were published this autumn 2017 in Health Expectations. The studies come from, Prehospital Outcomes for Evidence Based Evaluation (PhOEBE), funded by a five year National Institute for Health Research Programme Grant for Applied Health Research led by Professor Niro Siriwardena from CaHRU and Janette Turner of the Centre for Urgent and Emergency care research (CURE).

EMAS - A&E 6_750The first article, ‘Prioritizing novel and existing ambulance performance measures through expert and lay consensus: a three-stage multimethod consensus study‘ involved a multistakeholder consensus event, modified Delphi study, and patient and public consensus workshop, which together identified a shortlist of ambulance outcome and performance measures important to ambulance clinicians and service providers, service users, commissioners and academics.

N0030773 Paramedic driving an ambulanceThe final set of measures included change in pain score, accuracy of call identification, average response time, proportion of patients with a serious condition who survived to 7 days post-admission, death (within 3 days) from a low risk condition, proportion of patients transported to the Emergency Department who were discharged without treatment or investigation, and the proportion of those with specific conditions treated according to current guidelines.

The public consensus workshop, ‘A coproduced patient and public event: An approach to developing and prioritizing ambulance performance measures‘, was effective for obtaining public feedback on which ambulance performance measures were most highly favoured by lay participants. These measures have been developed to be used in future by ambulance services or commissioners to benchmark care quality between services or regions or to measure performance over time.

By Prof Niro Siriwardena

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Viet-Hai Phung attends KCL social science research summer school

Viet-Hai Phung, research assistant and doctoral student at CaHRU recently attended the summer school, ‘Doing social science research in healthcare settings’ at King’s College, London, 13-14 July 2017. This is his account of the course.

vhp2“It was a pleasure to attend this two-day summer school that was run by King’s College, London aimed at Early Career Researchers and PhD students. The five sessions spread over two days covered a range of topics of particular interest and relevance to me. First up, we looked at using theory in applied health research. This started off with the basics of comparing positivism, with its emphasis on objective reality, and interpretivism’s accommodation of multiple realities. The session continued by linking micro, meso and macro-theory. A key focus was Bourdieu’s logic of practice which explores how context and structures affect decisions.

The afternoon session examined how reflexivity can be used at different stages of the research process. Reflexivity also has its place within positivism and interpretivism. There then followed a discussion of the merits of ethics committees. Do they ensure that research is conducted to the highest standards or are they too risk averse? The session concluded by examining the role of the researcher in data collection.

sunflowerThe final day’s morning session continued to discuss the role of ethics committees. It discussed the way research governance has evolved within the healthcare sector and universities. In particular, we discussed the research governance process, particularly, the role of the Health Research Authority. The way they operated was compared (unfavourably) with university ethics committees, which from personal experience, I would agree with. The second morning session discussed the types of social science research that is likely to attract funding. Researchers are encouraged to publish to benefit their institutions in the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Increasingly, PhD students are encouraged to publish papers from their thesis. Deductive projects are particularly attractive to funders because they start with a clear research question, while the initial lack of clarity inherent in inductive research is less persuasive to potential funders.

The final session of the summer school examined the process from an initial idea to it becoming implemented. Apparently, this process normally takes around 17 years, with many pitfalls that can potentially slow the process down.

As a healthcare researcher and a PhD student, I found the summer school to be highly useful and relevant. The sessions were delivered clearly, in an engaging manner and with great enthusiasm. I would definitely recommend it to others in similar career situations.”

By Viet-Hai Phung