Love thy neighbour – why friends may be the answer to staying well.

Professor Anne Rogers is Professor of Health Systems Implementation in the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southampton and Research Director of the NIHR CLAHRC Wessex

Professor Anne Rogers explains how weaker social ties play a role in helping people manage a long term illness.

With ever more attention on the NHS and how many nurses and doctors are needed to give people the best care, one part of the health equation is going unnoticed – What attention is being paid to the role of the patient and their extended network of relationships? In early 70s West Coast America a piece of research by Anselm Strauss and colleagues examined a set of questions on ‘self-care’.

Involving patients and the public in research: Reflecting back and looking ahead

By Claire Ballinger and Mark Stafford-Watson – Chairs, Wessex Inclusion in Service Design and Delivery (WISeRD) group

It’s the end of our first year in CLAHRC Wessex, we have been thinking about our progress in involving patients and the public in our work (or PPI as it’s called), and reviewing where our focus should be for the coming year.  We have settled on five strategic aims:

• Develop our capacity for patient and public involvement (PPI) in research and implementation programmes
• Promote our CLAHRC Wessex activities to the wider public (public engagement)
• Evolve and measure ways to include patients and the public to identify research priorities
• Develop a group of patient and public researchers
• Measure the impact of patient and public involvement within CLAHRC Wessex

Appetising research – How we’re Introducing Volunteer Mealtime Assistants for older inpatients across University Hospital Southampton

Dr Helen Roberts is Associate Professor in Geriatric Medicine and Theme 2 lead for Improving Routine Care for Ageing and Dementia for NIHR CLAHRC Wessex

Poor nutrition in hospital inpatients is a problem that is becoming increasingly recognised both in the UK and worldwide, and requires a multifaceted approach, including protected meal times, red trays and protein and energy supplementation as required. One factor that particularly affects older inpatients is the amount of assistance they receive at mealtimes. Time-pressured nursing staff may not have the time they need to help patients with their meals.

APPLIED HEALTH RESEARCH – GET A GRiP – Professor Anne Rogers Research Director of the NIHR CLAHRC Wessex

In the many discussions I’ve had people about our newly established and growing CLAHRC programme of research and implementation, it often centres on the question of what is Applied Health Research? Is it different from more conventional bio-medical research?  It made me think that we need to be a bit more explicit about this thing called Applied Research. So here goes.

The GENIE is out of the bottle – but who controls it? – Dr Anne Kennedy, Principal Research Fellow, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southampton

Here at the CLAHRC Wessex we have been using and developing an interactive tool called GENIE . This is designed to engage and link people with long-term health conditions to social activities and support they value and find useful.

We have been working on the Isle of Wight with the My Life a Full Life team and other organisations to see how we can integrate GENIE as part of day-to-day support for people. Last week we had our first meeting, after months of using the system there to work towards making GENIE ‘Business as Usual’.

Tackling operational problems in health care using modelling and simulation – Dr Tom Monks

NHS clinical commissioning groups across the UK are all focused on improving patient care while facing the pressures of an aging population, increasing volumes of patients with multiple complex health problems and the stark political reality of the need to cut costs. 

The complexity of these decisions and how to improve care is often enormously underestimated in the popular media. Take for example, the waiting time performance of accident and emergency (A&E) departments in the UK.