Colleagues across Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WWL) and across the UK will be wearing red today, Friday 20th September, to demonstrate their support and appreciation for all those participating, undertaking, and supporting research. WWL’s Tree of Hope, on the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary (RAEI) site, will also turn red to show support.
#Red4Research Day takes place on Friday 20th September and aims to get as many people as possible wearing red to showcase and celebrate the phenomenal work, learning legacy and innovative treatments, systems and techniques that have arisen from research and development.
WWL’s Clinical Research Team is a well-established team with a large portfolio of research studies, with 56 studies open and recruiting now, looking into most disease areas seen in our hospitals. The team is engaging with other health and care providers across the Wigan borough with the aim of delivering research together and providing access to the most up-to-date therapies with the aim of providing “Research for All”, with a dedicated Research Hub in Ashton-in-Makerfield, aiming to bring research closer to home in a community setting. The Hub is centrally located, is easily accessible to our patients and enables more opportunities for health and care providers across primary, community, mental health, social care, and secondary and specialist care and schools to work together.
Alison Robinson, Head of Research at WWL, said: “Currently, most of our research invites patients attending hospital for review or treatments, which will of course continue. Research projects at WWL can involve trials to confirm if new medications, treatments and new devices, such as stents or joint implants, are effective. While other studies may involve our teams asking for access to patients’ clinical data from previous or ongoing standard care to be collected and shared with researchers to be analysed to answer a specific research question. Some studies ask for patients’ insights into the care they receive to help inform how we can make improvements. The Hub enables more patients to be offered research opportunities closer to their homes, which may be a more comfortable environment with easier parking for our patients.”
WWL’s top five recruiting studies, assisted by patients agreeing to be involved, include:
- A study into reproductive health, looking at the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a maternity quality improvement programme to reduce excess bleeding and need for transfusion after childbirth, which currently has 1,058 recruits.
- A real-world evaluation of Robot Assisted Surgical services in musculoskeletal/orthopaedics, where 308 participants undergoing hip surgery at Wrightington Hospital have been recruited, making us the top recruiting site in Greater Manchester (GM) for this study.
- A study conducting investigations on retrieved used implants and associated tissue samples of patients undergoing revision hip surgery at Wrightington hospital. Currently, we have 55 recruits on this study.
- A study looking at a hospital staff changes in practice in review and potential removal of unnecessary medications, to assess effectiveness, safety and cost savings to the NHS. A total of 188 participants have been recruited at the RAEI by the Pharmacy department.
- A total of 130 recruits have been identified for a study into anaesthesia, again, making us the top recruiting site in GM. This study measures complications and outcomes from the patient’s perspective after major surgery.
Alison continues: “We are encouraging everyone to join in and support Red for Research Day by wearing something red on the day or posting on social media with the hashtag #Red4Research2024 and be sure to tag @WWL_Research and @WWLNHS.”