We are a team of researchers, patients, doctors, nurses, policy makers, and care-home managers. We've come together to evaluate how well Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) services have reduced A&E crowding and avoidable admissions to hospital. We are funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health and Social Care Delivery Research Programme.
We are organised into four groups: the research team, the project steering group, the project stakeholder group, and patient and public groups.
You can find out more about these groups and their members, below.
We do the day-to-day work of running the study.
We scrutinise the research team’s progress toward the project goals.
We inform how the research team delivers its objectives by contributing the perspectives of those who use healthcare services.
We inform how the research team delivers its objectives by contributing the perspectives of those who refer patients to same day emergency care, and the perspectives of community services.
Richard Jacques
Co-Principal Investigator
Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics with expertise in the design, analysis and reporting of observational studies using routinely collected data for health services research. He is currently a co-investigator on the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire and Humber theme on Urgent and Emergency Care.
Suzanne Mason
Co-Principal Investigator
Professor of Emergency Medicine and NIHR Senior Investigator with expertise in health services research and evaluating complex interventions. She is academic lead for Data Connect, a University of Sheffield data and processing service hosting the CUREd+ database.
Howard Whiting
Patient Representative
A member of the Data Connect PPIE Network and an NHS patient. As a former field Archaeologist and a current museum employee, he brings a unique public facing role to the project.
Liz Croot
Stakeholder Group Chair
Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care Services Research in the School of Medicine and Population Health at the University of Sheffield. She is also on the leadership team of the NIHR Sheffield School for Social Care Research. Liz is an expert in participatory research methods with practitioners and service users.
Jen Lewis
Research Fellow
Statistician with interests in how novel statistical and computational methodologies can help us to exploit routinely collected healthcare data to drive improvements in patient care, particularly in urgent and emergency care and in situations where standard clinical trials may not be possible or feasible. Jen is leading on the cost analysis and interpretation of results.
Beckie Simpson
Research Fellow
Lecturer in Medical Statistics with interests in Urgent and Emergency Care, analysis of routinely collected data, and asthma epidemiology. Becky is leading on the analysis of routine data and contributing to interpretation of results.
Anna Cantrell
Senior Information Specialist
Expert in systematic literature searching, rapid reviews, evidence synthesis, and knowledge transfer. Anna is leading on the rapid review of the literature.
Fiona Sampson
Professor of Health Services Research
Director of the Centre for Urgent and Emergency Care Research (CURE) with interest in evaluating health care systems, patient perspectives of health services, and the use of observational and ethnographic methods in health services research. Fiona is leading on the case studies.
Daniel Lasserson
Professor of Acute Ambulatory Care
Professor of Acute Ambulatory Care at the University of Warwick, working clinically in acute geriatric medicine and the hospital at home service for Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, and is the Past President of the UK Hospital at Home Society. Dan provides the project with expertise in acute ambulatory care.
Susan Croft
Emergency Medicine Consultant
Emergency medicine consultant at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Susan provides the project with expertise in emergency medicine and acute ambulatory care.
Jo Coster
Patient and Public Involvement Fellow
A mixed-method researcher with interests related to the evaluation of new and existing health policies and services, with a focus on quality of care, patient safety and emergency, urgent and prehospital care.
Ciarán McInerney
Project manager
Research Fellow with experience in heath-service research, electronic healthcare records, and performance analysis. Research interests are applied and methodological with systemic and causal-inference perspectives.
Joanne Hinde
Administrator
Joanne started work with the University of Sheffield in 2001 and came to ScHARR in September 2003 to work on the UWAIT Study within the Health Services Research section. Since then she has worked on various studies all within this unit. She continues to provide administrative support for a portfolio of projects, including ours.
The ten members of the project steering group are policy makers, and clinicians and academics in acute medicine, emergency medicine, same day emergency care, and social care. The group’s role is to scrutinise the research team’s progress toward the project goals.
The steering group and research team meet three times over the course of the project, and the research team submit half-yearly reports between meetings.
The six members of the project stakeholder group are policy makers, and clinicians in acute medicine, emergency medicine, same day emergency care, and social care. The group’s role is to inform how the research team delivers its objectives, by contributing the perspectives of those who refer patients to same day emergency care, and the perspectives of community services.
The stakeholder group is consulted three times over the course of the project. The consultations are expected to deal with:
Identifying who Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) services might work well for and why.
Feeding back on the plans for analysing case studies and interviews with patients and staff.
Feeding back on findings, highlighting what might be of particular interest to specific audiences and advising about ways to share learning from the work.
Groups of patients and members of the public will be brought together four times during the course of the project. The groups' role is to inform how the research team delivers its objectives, by contributing the perspectives of people who have used healthcare service.
The four workshops that we will run with patient and public groups are:
Identifying who Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) services are. (Spring 2025)
Identifying topics to consider for case-study interviews. (Autumn 2025)
Helping to choose case-study sites, and reviewing interview topic guides. (Autumn 2025)
Interpreting findings and suggesting amendments to our (communication plan). (Winter 2027)