research

The SHED leaderboard is live!

Hi everyone; a bit of a break since our last post but I've got an update for you.
To everyone working hard in the SHED study: thank you so much for all of your hard work and dedication. We are so lucky as a relatively nascent trainee network to have such enthusiastic researchers working with us.
It's not all take-take-take, however. I've been slaving away over a hot laptop to bring you a bit of fun - we now have a way of tracking how many patients we are recruiting to SHED.
It can be found here: tinyurl.com/ternshedmap

SHED Leaderboard

This has been inspired by the brilliant map for the PERUKI research project Bronchstart.
Now, this is only as accurate as the data that is input onto REDCap as it captures data from that. It is also not updated live, as that would require an awful lot of coding far beyond my abilities and it would require I find out what an APIs is. For now, it will be a map that I update each week. When I update it each week I will be keeping track of new recruits targeted. Each month I will be allocating fabulous prizes to a centre's recruiting members. These include the Official TERN Badge (TM) or an Official TERN Lanyard. I have big bags of both.
Whilst it is easy in centres with a lot of research infrastructure to recruit patients, I also want to ensure that the centres with only one or two people working or in slightly smaller centres get a fair crack of the whip, so I will be applying dense and intensely complicated statistical analyses to attempt to compensate for smaller centres or fewer people working. The next draw will be the 17th December, so until then, I want you all to get cracking. There's only one event worth looking forward to in December, and that's this prize draw.
Prizes are below:
So, have a look at the map and start planning with your centre how you're going to sweep to victory.
My warmest regards,
Rob
TERN Fellow

Avatar photoby Robert Hirst

CERA Is Online

CERA is online!

Good morning everyone, and many thanks for all your hard work with CERA - CERA is online. The study has gone live and the full preprint can be found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3760472. As you may have seen, the press release has been picked up by a few places. I'm going to share with you where you can find our work.

Press

These articles are directly about the findings of the CERA Study:

and these articles reference the findings:

Interview

Listen to Tom Roberts, former TERN Fellow, discussing the CERA study on LBC. It can be found on our new Soundcloud.

Infographic

You can find our infographic here.  Let me know what you think!

Journal Club Facilitation

If you've got a Journal Club coming up or simply want a little more detail than the infographic but can't sit down to the paper, you can read the Journal Club facilitation document. If you want to run it as a journal club, instructions are found within the document. Big shout out to Laura Cottey & Leia Kane for their work on TIRED for 'inspiring' this format. The document is here.

 

Thank you again for all of your sterling efforts & enthusiasm. TERN is the result of all of your work & ardour.

Thank you.

Rob

 

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A SHED Update

SHED Update here.

Good morning everyone,

Many thanks, again, for all of the time and effort you have put into the Subarachnoid Haemorrhage in the Emergency Department (SHED) study. We have been delighted to see so much enthusiasm and engagement for this study, especially after delays due to the first peak of the pandemic.

However, this new viral variant and resultant third wave of COVID-19 is a further challenge to observational research. A new national lockdown has been enacted. Patients from Kent are being transferred to intensive care units in Devon for capacity. The urgent public health research prioritisation template has been recirculated and it is clear that any level 3 studies will receive little or no R&D support regarding set up, governance, oversight and recruitment.

As a consequence, we have discussed again with the sponsor to review delivery of the SHED study. Unfortunately, we all feel it will be difficult to proceed; the majority of sponsor R&D staff are working from home and are being prioritised to support urgent public health COVID-19 research. Your local R&D departments are likely facing similar challenges. Redeployment of nursing & clinical staff is happening, which will affect both research nurse support and clinical delivery of the study. It appears untenable to proceed at present and we remain concerned about the validity of the research within the current NHS pandemic setting.

We are therefore proposing a further deferral for SHED. We plan to defer until September 2021 for the earlier sites and October 2021 for the majority of sites.

We share your disappointment and can only apologise if rotational placement means you will now struggle to participate. However, we now have a 6-month opportunity to develop research opportunities at further sites, make the necessary amendments and ensure the protocol is deliverable in the context of any recent local changes. We have over 110 sites signed up, so chances are the ED you move to will already be involved. If it isn’t, let us know, and we can work with you to get local approvals set-up so you can hit the ground running.

It is a very difficult decision to have to do this, especially a second time, but we are certain this is the right thing to do. In addition to the above, we will be using the next 6 months to work on our website and consolidate & publish the outputs from recent TERN projects. We will also press ahead with the recently commenced Delphi project, as discussed at the December EMTA conference. You'll receive a SHED update confirming details regarding SHED nearer the time, and we'll work with you throughout.

The infrastructure and funding behind TERN provided by RCEM means that background work can continue and our administrative team can take the hit on paperwork, rather than this falling on the shoulders of enthusiastic individual researchers. This remains a big step forward for EM network research and should help us to deliver on the ideas you put forward, even if there are future hurdles to navigate.

For now, good luck, stay safe and get in touch if you have any queries.

Robert Hirst & Dan Horner

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Merry Christmas from TERN

Good afternoon everyone,

It's been a long, tough year, for everyone. The global pandemic has tested us all and changed the fabric of society. Our behaviours have changed, our departments have changed, and our lives have changed. Most people will know someone who has sadly lost their life to this virus, or will have not seen someone they hold dear for many months now. The effects of the virus has highlighted inequality in our society, and we've seen it impact disproportionately on some more than others. The world (for the most part) feels like everything has been put on hold. The distribution of the first few vaccines holds some hope, but it'll be some time until we see anything approaching normal. The effects of this virus will last much longer than the time we remain locked-down for.

But, at this time of year, we can't help but look to the year ahead. A lot of research efforts have been diverted to COVID-19, and it has been really interesting seeing the scientific process in action. We've learnt so much about this virus, and despite the alarming news of a new viral variant, we know much more about treating this virus now. This has led to delays to other areas of research. We've had to delayed SHED twice now, and for the time being we aim to continue with SHED in February / March (depending upon your site). However, if anything changes you will of course hear about it from us.

In the meanwhile, we've received a number of applications for our new committee roles, who will help to expand TERN and the role it has in networking and education. We'll be introducing them in February once we've sifted through them and interviewed them.

Our Delphi process to investigate trainee research priorities continues. We have our participants, and will be distributing the initial questionnaire in the new year. We'll be posting about this and updating you as the process develops.

More imminently, we are hosting a session for the Trainees Research Engagement Day on the 14th January 2021. Our session will feature updates from Etimbuk Umana from Irish TERN on their National Emergency Resuscitation Airway Audit project, from Harriet Tucker from NATRIC on the TETRIS Project, and from me providing an update on TERN. It will be an excellent day and the programme is stuffed full of fantastic talks - you can check the programme here. It's £25 and will be an excellent day. Sign up here!

 

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Welcome to the TERNiverse!

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the new home of the Trainee Emergency Research Network. This website will be the place to find information on the network, find out about our studies, and retrieve protocols & study documents. This is not to say we are leaving RCEMLearning - we'll still be posting our monthly posts and featured articles on RCEMLearning.

We want to provide a space where we can discuss the network, answer frequently asked questions about our studies, and provide study-specific resources. For instance, when we start recruiting for SHED, this will be the place to find our site leaderboard. If you go to our entry for SHED, you can find our protocol and documents required to run the study.

This site will also function as a repository of information about our studies, with links to our presentations, publications, and provide an overview of each study. For an example of this, look at our entry for TIRED - the navigation bar at the top will take you there.

We've also included information about the network. A lot of the information here has been the basis for some decisions we've taken, but we've previously not had the space to discuss why we've made the decisions we have made. This site will allow us to be more transparent about the network and the decisions it makes. It is a trainee-centred network - it is important you know about the internal workings of it.

Please email me if you've got any questions, or if you'd like to throw praise our way. Most of the praise for the design should go to Nigel Taylor, who made a template so fool-proof that even I was able to produce these pages.

Cheers,

Rob

TERN Fellow

Avatar photoby Robert Hirst