Health and Care Professionals
One of our aims is to support the development of the local clinical research workforce in order to facilitate the delivery of high quality NIHR Clinical Research Network Portfolio studies.
Workforce Development
Our Workforce Development Team work to promote research as an attractive career option within the NHS. Working with colleagues, we support a number of national initiatives and our dedicated learning and development team deliver a range of learning programmes locally to support the delivery of high quality clinical research across the East of England region.
We aim to improve the standards of research delivery by:
- Ensuring all delivery staff have the opportunity to connect and share best practice
- Supporting the development of our future clinical research delivery leaders through the Advanced Leadership Programme
- Identifying the learning needs of the workforce and providing a comprehensive programme of learning
- Developing our Principal Investigator community and supporting trainees to get involved in clinical research
- Providing delivery staff with support in workforce planning, recruitment, career pathways and professional development.
If you are working to deliver NIHR research in the region, you can find more information and guidance to help you and your team on the CRN East of England Hub Home or contact:
Esther Thomas, CRN East of England Workforce Development Lead, Tel: 07921 391185 or email: esther.thomas@nihr.ac.uk.
Wider Care and Community Settings
We're working hard to grow research happening in wider care and community settings outside the NHS. To do this, we are engaging with people across local authorities, schools, care homes, hospices and other areas to help make our research as inclusive as possible.
Public Health in Local Authorities
We're engaging staff in every Local Authority in the region to represent us within their organisations, and help us access the people and pathways to enable new research opportunities. This will also mean more people will be able to get involved than ever before.
Find out more about our NIHR Public Health representatives in Local Authorities in the East of England.
Social Care
Along with supporting NHS research staff, we provide support for staff working in social care organisations to help them deliver research to improve treatments and care for service users, as well as improve environments for those working in the field.
Find out about some of the initiatives we've developed to help social care staff get involved in research, including dedicated training and campaigns.
ENRICH: Enabling Research In Care Homes
Our ENRICH network brings together care home staff, residents and their families with researchers. It provides a toolkit of resources to help care homes make the most of research and researchers to set up and run studies effectively and collaboratively in care homes.
We have expanded our team, including introducing a new Agile workforce who are working hard to help care home teams join our ENRICH scheme. Our Agile team is led by Kate McCloskey, our Lead Community and Care Manager, and includes research nurses who are working in our localities across the region.
Hospices
The aim of hospice care is to improve the lives of people who have an incurable illness. Hospices provide care for people from the point at which their illness is diagnosed as terminal to the end of their life, however long that may be.
We are expanding our work to support the delivery of research to, for example, improve how people are cared for in hospices and find ways to help them live as well as possible while they are residing in them, as well as helping staff develop new skills and care processes.
Schools and Colleges
Our Lead Community and Care Manager and Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement team are working to engage schools and other educators in research. Part of this programme includes working with the University of East Anglia (UEA) Health and Social Care Partnership to develop a lesson plan based on our interactive video game, Rebo's Research Adventure, which is available now.
Other wider care and community settings
Our team have plans in place for the coming year which will see us bring research opportunities to teams across many more settings. We look forward to reporting further on this significant programme of work soon.
Our Supranetwork Partnership
CRN East of England is working in partnership with CRN East Midlands and CRN West Midlands as part of a supranetwork to increase the impact of our work. Find out about the training, information and resources available to help you deliver Research in Wider Care and Community Settings and services.
If you work in a care setting and would like to find out how you can get involved in research, please email us at researcheoe@nihr.ac.uk.