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Dr Fiona Lecky (pictured), lead for the Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Local Specialty Group (LSG) provides an introduction to one of our newest teams.
“We got up and running in January 2011 following a successful application to the NIHR contingency fund.
“Our first area of work we’ve carried out is to see what was already happening across Greater Manchester within Emergency Medicine and Critical Care research. We found that there are pockets of research happening across a number of Trusts in the region in and we’ve started to bring together our local PIs to see what extra support we can offer.
“Because of the nature of emergency medicine, there are a number of issues around recruiting patients to trials that must first be overcome. Depending on the trial and the patient’s symptoms when they arrive in the emergency room, consent can be difficult. Also, the recruitment window is often very short and then follow-up can be tricky as the patient can end up in any area of the hospital. It can also be difficult for staff – who are in a very busy and time-sensitive environment – to spend 30 minutes or more explaining a trial to a patient. So we’re aiming to use our GM CLRN funding to provide a core of dedicated staff who are funded or GCP trained.
“Currently we only have academic studies on our portfolio but we have a number of commercial studies that are in the pipeline. In the future I see this area expanding as we have more support across Greater Manchester sites. Collectively, these sites must have over a million people visiting them each year so we have a massive potential for increasing our recruitment.”
Dr Fiona Lecky is a Senior Lecturer in Emergency Medicine at the University of Manchester and Honorary Consultant at Salford Royal NHS Foundation. For more information Fiona can be contacted via email.
