It was an honour to receive the award which will be a huge asset in my research portfolio, particularly as an early career researcher - Grace Moran, University of Birmingham
"The main highlight of the conference for me was learning the similarities and differences between UK and Australian primary health care. Primary care in Australia faces unique challenges which we don’t encounter in the UK including: healthcare in extremely remote areas (imagine your nearest big hospital is a plane journey away); health of the aboriginal people; lack of continuity between patients and GPs (Australians don’t have a set GP and can visit any GP practice). I also learnt that the UK is much further advance in structure and use of electronic medical records (EMRs). As my PhD involves the use of the THIN database (large database of EMRs), it was a great opportunity to make contacts with people doing a similar research in Australia."
Grace is currently completing her PhD at the University of Birmingham's Primary Care Clinical Sciences. Her supervisors are: Professors Tom Marshall, Melanie Calvert and Dr Max Feltham.
Read about Grace's overall experience of the conference on the School's blog: www.nihrspcr.com
On 23 July 2014, The Independent daily newspaper 'i' interviewed Grace in their Postgrad Diary article "Stroke issues are increasingly in the spotlight" which can be found on page six of the postgraduate supplement.