How did you get started in research/what inspired you?

My interest in developing and improving my practice using evidence base medicine has always been a passion and priority since Medical school and this is when my engagement with formal research started. Throughout my medical training, I attended Journal Clubs and reviewed most recent relevant literature to my area of practice and that’s when my interest in research has peaked and I wanted to understand the research process more which led to my first formal research fellow job which opened many avenues to engage, lead and design research projects including phase 1 and phase 2 trials which were funded both commercially and non-commercially.

What do you enjoy about research?

The challenge of exploring/validating new treatments or investigations technique is what fascinates me most about the research. We are all here to help patients get better and I found it very gratifying to engage in research that would find novel treatments for conditions with previously limited treatment options. Other aspect of research that I enjoyed is the part to ensure that these novel treatments are assessed in a very well controlled environment with close monitoring particularly in phase 2 of the trials in general which would require the presence of dedicated research staff to engage with that aspect more promptly.

What training and support have you found most valuable in your career?

Having a mentor who is experienced in research and trials, the support of the local Research and Development Departments and the Clinical Research Nurses within the trusts that I worked in were the most valuable things that I found. Keeping my Good Clinical Practice certification has been really good to ensure that my training in conducting research has always been up to date. Having the support of a statistician when conducting a large scale study or multivariate analysis of other research was very useful and dare I say important to ensure that the methodology, trial/research sample size and results proposed statistical calculation were appropriate and accurate early in the research project rather than leaving it to discover that there were inaccuracies more towards the end of the results calculation stage.

Which people/organisations did you get in touch with to help you?

Most of all more senior colleagues who had interest and engagement in research locally. Local trust R&D department, research resources in the NIHR website, Cochrane database for trials and research related to that and Pubmed to search for previous journals.