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Developing my research and innovation knowledge and skills

Your support

Commencing your research and innovation journey includes many actions. The first may include developing a goal for your personal development plan as part of your annual review/appraisal which includes:

Your local organisations support

The actions and resources needed to move your research and innovation goal forwards can come from local support in your organisation. Here are links to the support offered across GM for health and care professionals working in health and social care.

Greater Manchester Mental Health Partnership

The GMMHP offer advice and support on research and innovation through the research department. This includes newsletters, webinars, celebration events and resources. To find out more contact AskAboutResearch@gmmh.nhs.uk

Northern Care Alliance

NCA R&I team offer advice on grant applications and publishing research including comprehensive guidance on acknowledgements in publications NCA researchers present their findings across European and International conferences and publish their findings in high impact, peer reviewed journals. All publications are listed in the NCA monthly research and innovation newsletter (R&I bulletin). Library services look at all publications too, so if you are at a point of looking to publish your work, you can contact Sue Steele on Sue.Steele@nca.nhs.uk.

Pennine Care

Pennine Care offer support through the knowledge service. Access requires your staff login details. If you are looking for costing and grant advice for Pennine Care linked projects, contact their research funding manager, Caroline Oates on Caroline.oates5@nhs.net.

As Pennine Care is a fairly small research team, always striving to grow, they encourage anyone at Pennine Care who has interest in research to contact them on researchdevelopment.penninecare@nhs.net. They are happy to talk about any aspects of research, big or small.

Stockport NHS Foundation Trust

The Stockport intranet pages provide information around research and innovation support available. You can also contact the office team for further support via research.development@stockport.nhs.uk.

  • The library team provide support for publications or literature searches, email them on Library.Enquiries@stockport.nhs.uk. Complete the online form to request a search.
  • The library offer free submission to BMJ Case Reports: Contact Library.Enquiries@stockport.nhs.uk for the fellowship number to submit or for more information. Access to full-text journal articles is also available.
  • If you cannot find an article the library also has a request article service by signing in with OpenAthens.
  • Books on statistics, research design, appraising research and writing for publication are available in the library which is located on the 1st Floor of Pinewood House at Stepping Hill Hospital. You can join the library to borrow books and sign in with OpenAthens to access e-books.
  • The library offers training sessions on literature searching skills and critical appraisal of research papers. Please email Library.Enquiries@stockport.nhs.uk for more information.
  • Register for KnowledgeShare to get regular, personalised evidence updates and keep up to date with high level evidence related to your research interests.
Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust

The knowledge and library services department library@tgh.nhs.uk can advise on research publications, literature searches and provide access to extensive online databases and eBook collections. A Research specialty guide is available, it includes resources to develop research skills, links to medical search engines and statistics and guides and tools for systematic reviews, critical appraisal and referencing tools. The research and development department can advise on costings for studies developed by Tameside staff and can be emailed on rd@tgh.nhs.uk

Other local organisations support

NIHR RDDN

The NIHR RDDN supports the delivery of high quality research that enables the best care for our population

Greater Manchester Applied Research Collaboration (GM ARC)

The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Greater Manchester (ARC-GM) supports applied health and care research that responds to, and meets, the needs of local populations and local health and care systems.

NIHR RDDN Portfolio

It is advantageous to get your research project onto an NIHR portfolio. If your research is on an NIHR study, it means your research can get an experienced delivery team. This can help in terms of access to Study Support Service, access to relevant research delivery training and ISRCTN (International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number) registration via the Central Portfolio Management System.

In order to get an NIHR portfolio for your study, you need to apply for the portfolio through the appropriate route, either through the Non-commercial Portfolio Application service or the standard Integrated Research Application System (IRAS).

Research Support Service (RSS)

The NIHR Research Support Service (RSS) provides support to researchers to develop applications to national, peer-reviewed research programmes. This covers all NIHR programmes and UK Research Councils, as well as national health and care charities.

Research Support Service Specialist Centre for Social Care

Hosted by the RSS Hub delivered by Lancaster University in partnership with the Universities of Liverpool (including Liverpool Clinical Trials Centre), Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan. The RSSSCSC partnership provides national leadership and co-ordination of expertise and wider specialist networks to develop and deliver innovative social care research.

NHS Knowledge and Library Services

NHS England is committed to ensuring that all NHS staff and learners on placement have access to knowledge and library services (KLS) to achieve high-quality, safe healthcare. KLS across NHS England offer a range of services including study spaces, access to evidence, training and resources:

NHS Open Athens account provides access to digital resources provided by the NHS.

NHS Knowledge and Library Hub provides NHS-funded, knowledge and evidence resources in one place, using a single search.

Literature searching services to help you find the evidence.

Training on finding evidence, critical appraisal and writing for publication.

Find your local NHS KLS team.

Published academic research: Free resources and access

Without access to subscriptions provided by university and NHS libraries, nurses, midwives and allied health professionals may find research locked behind paywalls. Practices such as Open Access Publishing and self archiving have lead to an increasing percentage of articles being freely readable. Here are some resources to help:

Access to Research gives free, walk-in access to over 30 million academic articles in participating public libraries across the UK.

Universities usually mandate that their academics deposit a copy of any articles they publish into their institutional repository. This will either be the final published version of the article, or an “accepted manuscript”. Here you can see an example of a PDF provided by the University of Salford’s repository Worktribe

Google Scholar can be a good place to start when looking for an article, as it automatically provides links to many Open Access articles, institutional and subject repositories, preprint servers and academic social networks.

Researchers are usually keen to share their own articles. It’s common for them to do this either on academic social networks (Academia.edu and ResearchGate are the most common) or on their own personal websites.

Free e-book collections is a webpage listing freely available and open access e-book collections which cover a variety of publishers and subject areas.

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How to kick start your research and innovation journey in health and social care book laid down