Top Tips from a New Practice
I'm a GP partner at Attenborough Surgery in Bushey and Watford. We are a large practice with 4 local branches. While we have always focused on providing high quality responsive care for our patient population for many years, until this last year or so, we had not been involved in research. I feel that as clinicians who want to do the best that we can for our patients and the population as a whole, we should also support clinical research, hence we joined the RSI scheme and have become very, very active in research.
So far we have been involved in more than 10 trials over the last year or so! Many of these require very little clinical input, as they simply require a review of a list of patients to determine whether or not they are appropriate for the trial. Much of the work involved is administrative. We have trained up one of our receptionists to take a lead on this and the work involved is not too hard- easier than completing an ICB spreadsheet! We have also been brilliantly supported by the local RSI team who are always at the end of a phone/ email to help with specific queries. Also, the trial teams themselves are very responsive to any queries.
Now that we are more familiar with research work, we have just joined the Toucan trial, which actually requires day to day clinical input, testing new technology for female patients presenting with acute UTI symptoms. We have trained up our urgent care team to recruit and undertake the activities of this trial. While these do add to our consultation times our clinicians and patients see the benefits of being able to test cutting edge technology which has the potential to improve healthcare for all. The work is also funded.
At face value you may think that this extra work has added significantly to my day to day workload stress but actually I have found it an interesting and valuable distraction to the day job- also, the research workload is never "urgent" so I tend to fit it in when I can and often complete it in fits and starts depending on my other commitments as a GP partner. Our staff and patients often comment positively on our research work and see it as a valuable and important feather in our cap. If you are thinking about taking the leap I would say definitely go for it
Top tips:
Ensure you have the backing of your colleagues and an admin. team who can do most of the non clinical work that is required
Start with something that is light touch ie a trial that just requires you to review patient records and send invitations
Don't underestimate the added value to you, your team and patients, of fitting something different into your working week