Summary
Latest research offers for primary care include cancer, spiritual health and child tooth decay.
Fresh opportunities for primary care to take part in research studies are being offered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Clinical Research Network (NIHR CRN).
Their latest offers include studies on cancer, spiritual health, and child tooth decay.
ThinkCancer!
Cancer diagnosis can be delayed in primary care. The study teams’ goal is to help general practices recognise possible cancers earlier which will lead to better outcomes for patients. The study team has developed a unique educational and behavioural package called ‘ThinkCancer!’. This involves three workshops for all staff in a practice team.
The study team will assess the effect of ThinkCancer! by measuring the time between a patient first contacting their general practice with a potential cancer symptom and their referral to hospital. A reduction in this time is known to be linked with earlier stage of cancer at diagnosis, needing less treatment, and costing the NHS less overall.
Spiritual health and social prescribing: a survey – a research opportunity for social prescribers
The Spiritual Health Assessment and Recommendation in Primary care (SHARP) project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Spiritual health is a broad term, including meaning, purpose or the personal soul; transcendence and our relationships to others and a higher power; and religious or spiritual practice.
Anyone who works in social prescribing can participate, or those in a similar role straddling the local community and primary care, for example care coordinators, navigators, link workers.
You don’t need to be spiritual or religious to take part. To take part, you will be asked to complete an online survey which should take around 10-20 minutes.
This research has never been done before in the UK and it is important to find out how we can improve a patient’s overall health.
EMIS Recruit
The Recruit solution from EMIS bridges the gap between patients, healthcare teams, and researchers by enabling primary care teams to easily support clinical trial recruitment directly within their clinical system. Recruit delivers complex pre-built searches against primary care Electronic Health Record (EHR) data to identify patients who may meet eligibility criteria for clinical trials. With just a few clicks, primary care teams can review the generated list and invite patients to register their interest via text or email. Patients can then choose to participate, with no data shared with the research organisation until consent is given. Find out more via the EMIS website or email Research@emisgroupplc.com
CHOICE
Child tooth decay is a major problem in the UK and many children end up in hospital to have teeth removed due to severe decay. We know that advice and support on how to improve dental health is lacking for parents and carers of these children. Once a child has had tooth decay, they may develop further tooth decay in the future because family routines and lifestyles may not change after treatment.
The CHOICE study aims to find out whether a structured conversation between the dental nurse and parents/primary care givers can improve oral health and hygiene for their child.
A full list of all available studies in general practice can be found on the NIHR Primary Care Research Hub. You can also get in touch with the team by emailing: researchsupport.crngm@nihr.ac.uk
The following research offers from the NIHR CRN Greater Manchester are still available:
TIMES – Currently available treatments for sleep disturbance in People Living with Dementia (PLWD) or Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) are not always effective. New assessment and management techniques that adopt a tailored, whole-person, approach to care may improve the ability to address this issue.
TIMES is an online decision-support tool that aims to help GPs deliver tailored care plans to improve sleep disturbance for PLWD/MCI.
The study team is seeking eight GP practices in England for a feasibility trial to identify, invite, and recruit PLWD/MCI with problematic sleep disturbance, together with their carers (family or professional i.e. in care homes) in pairs (patient-carer dyads). GP practices will be cluster randomised to deliver either usual care or delivery of the TIMES intervention.
INDIGO Community – The study uses questionnaires to help understand how a patient feels about their quality of life and experiences of care. Using a digital survey tool, the study hopes to run a project that will help understand more about the lives of patients after treatment for cancer. They plan to see which patient-reported outcome measures (PROMS) allow participants to express their quality of life, as rated by the participants. The study will also explore how to keep the amount of time and effort needed to complete the questionnaires as low as possible.
More information about clinical research and the work of NIHR CRN GM can be found on the PCB website.
We have updated the dentistry pages to include information about getting involved in dentistry research with the NIHR CRN GM.
