e-Participate

The Clinical Research Network West Midlands Primary Care PPIE team are supporting the roll out of the NIHR Patient Research Ambassador Initiative.

Patient Research Ambassadors (PRA) promote health research from a patient point of view. They could be a patient, service user, carer or lay person who is enthusiastic about health research and willing to communicate that to other patients and public as well as healthcare professionals

Complaints of breathlessness and wheeze are common reasons why patients consult their GP, and may simply be a short-term and minor problem, or could be an early sign of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, or ischaemic heart disease (IHD). The similarity of symptoms related to these conditions may make their diagnosis at initial presentation difficult, and often requires a number of tests.

Children with underlying medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes and cerebral palsy are ‘at risk’ of becoming more unwell from bacterial infections if they get flu. ARCHIE is a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial which aims to determine the effect of giving the antibiotic co-amoxiclav to ‘at risk’ children within five days of them becoming ill with flu or influenza-like illness.

The I-WOTCH intervention is targeting patients using Buprenorphine, Dipipanone, Morphine, Diamorphine, Fentanyl, Methadone, Oxycodone, Papavertum, Pentazocine, Pethidine, Tapentadol, or Tramadol for the treatment of persistent non-cancer pain. These drugs account for 95 per cent of UK strong opioid prescribing in primary care.

As part of a national initiative, we are seeking to employ early career GPs for up to 8 hours/month to link with the CRN primary care teams based at Birmingham, Keele and Warwick universities. If you are interested in applying, please contact Michaela Handley Michaela.handley@nihr.ac.uk for further details, expressions of interest to be received by Friday 15th September 2017.

Smoking remains the leading cause of ill health and mortality, at an estimated cost to the NHS of about £6 billion. Stop Smoking Services (SSSs) in England offer intensive advice and support to smokers motivated to quit, and smokers attending have a higher chance of succeeding in a quit attempt than if they attempted to quit alone. However the proportion of smokers using the SSS has been less than 5%, and the number is falling each year. In the Start2quit trial we developed an intervention to persuade and motivate more smokers to seek, or accept, help to quit.

Since its inception in 2006, the NIHR has significantly increased the scale of clinical research in the NHS, particularly through the Clinical Research Network. The enthusiastic engagement of NHS clinicians is an essential condition for sustaining and building on this success, particularly given the many competing demands on clinician time and resources.
These awards are for members of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and recognise outstanding contributions and innovations of NHS general practices and First5® GPs to the conduct of NIHR Clinical Research Network Portfolio studies in a primary care setting.