SPCR trainees' event offers phenomenal breadth and quality of research

The breadth and quality of research at the training event has been phenomenal. Feeling so privileged to be part of this community" - Barry Coughlan, University of Cambridge

The SPCR trainees’ event at St Anne’s College, Oxford, was attended by a record number of delegates from across the School and NIHR on 24 & 25 September this year.

The ‘speed networking’ ice-breaker proved to be a huge success with two minute meetings getting delegates all fired up for the days ahead. As well as enjoying the range of presentations on offer, trainees communicated their own research in three minute elevator pitches to small groups of supportive colleagues.

The School was pleased to introduce the trainees to the Evidence Synthesis Working Group on day two, with Anne-Marie Boylan, Sophie Park and Geoff Wong presenting parallel sessions on involving public contributors in evidence synthesis research, and realist approaches to health services research.

Brilliant couple of days at the SPCR training event in Oxford. Inspiring seeing the work and careers of others presenting and great meeting everyone” - Charles Hay, Keele University

Another highlight of the two day event was hearing about the personal career journey by the Director of the School for Public Health Research, Professor Ashley Adamson. Ashley gave the trainees invaluable career advice by highlighting challenges and serendipitous moments of her career as a nutritionist and academic. We look forward to meeting Ashley along with the SPHR trainees in the near future.

INVOLVE’s Paula Wray introduced the new NIHR National Standards for Public Involvement with her talk ‘Better public involvement for better research’. She highlighted previous NIHR initiatives with a background on how the Standards came about, and what they would like to achieve.

The School also recognises the invaluable advice and support given to the trainees by our presenters Clint Witchalls, Dawn Biram, Stephen Weng, Carl Heneghan, Sue Ziebland, Dan Richards-Doran and Charlotte Albury.

Wonderful to present my DPhil results and hear about all the great research from SPCR trainees – it’s been great to see how everyone’s projects have evolved over the last 3 years and meet amazing new trainees.”
- Charlotte Albury, University of Oxford

PRIZES

Two new prizes were introduced this year for ‘Best Blog’ and ‘Best Innovative use of PPI&E’. Congratulations to Kome Gbinigie for winning first prize with her blog ‘Diagnosing Urinary Tract Infections in older adults - Can we take the sting out of it?’, and Charlotte Albury for her example of PPIE ‘Involving patients and the public in the live science of conversation.’

Highly commended prizes went to Paul Teed and Fabian Sailer for their blog submissions, and to Claire Planner and Annabelle Machin for their PPIE contributions.