studies
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
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