Transcript for Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust video

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Dr Rachel Hall, Head of Research, Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust 

Reflecting on our achievements this year at Bridgewater Community Healthcare, I'm really proud that we've been able to support a number of the urgent public health research studies. Particularly as a community healthcare trust, we've shown that we can deliver these studies outside of the acute and primary sector.

Also, we've been able to extend our study opportunities for new teams within the trust. Our dental and children teams are running their first portfolio trials this year. This is a really big achievement for us, especially as we've got a modest research infrastructure.

Ruth Besford, Equality and Inclusion Manager, Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust 

As equality lead for Bridgewater, I feel it's really important that diversity is captured in research, so I'm always keen to look for opportunities for our staff to be involved in our national studies, giving that different perspective as a community provider.

I also feel it's really important that we try to enable different and diverse staff voices to be heard; sometimes those who aren't heard as often. This is reflected in all the work NIHR are doing around inclusion in research at the moment.

In the last 12 months, I've been involved in a national research study, Should I Stay or Go?, that's been looking at the impact of the unprecedented pandemic pressures on NHS staff. This follows on from previous research that we participated in that looked at the impact of other reforms, such as pension reforms, on NHS staff and their career plans for the future.

As Principal Investigator and lead trust for the Should I Stay or Go? research, we have faced some challenges, particularly around service pressures and staff capacity; their ability to get involved. This has been telling in itself about the vital importance of this work which we hope will inform nationally but also locally about future planning for the NHS workforce and what we need to do to support staff and retain and develop staff.