Catching up: recognition and looking forward

Image: Shortlisting for Proud to be PHU Award – Patient Award

It’s been almost a month since my last post and there’s been a lot happening behind the scenes!

Firstly, I’ve been shortlisted for the Proud to be PHU Awards 2024! This is an annual awards ceremony celebrating the achievements of staff across Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust. Nominees can be put forward by colleagues or patients, but the Award I’ve been shortlisted for is rather special as it’s the Patient Choice Award: this can only be nominated by patients, and of the six nominees, the finalist will be voted for by members of the public. I’m really pleased to have been shortlisted and even if I don’t win, it means an awful lot to me as the majority of my work is with patients and the public so it’s a priviledge to be recognised in this way 😀

And if that wasn’t enough, I was also awarded a Certificate of Inspiration through HIVE Portsmouth! HIVE supports the local voluntary and community sector. This one came as a complete surprise and the certificate arrived in the post. I wasn’t even aware that I’d been nominated, but I was delighted to receive it 😀

As far as my research internship goes, activity has, understandably slowed down, now that I’m back to my main role as PPI Facilitator. However, I’m still working to get the research work completed and I’m in the process of booking a date with 3 of my volunteer Patient Research Ambassadors to review the transcripts of the discussion group meetings I had back in August. By that point I will have been able to involve 14 different members of the PRA group in my project, which I’m very pleased about!

The next step, once the transcription review is done, is to write up the project so far – a first draft if you like – which I’ll share here on my blog. My plan is to then invite back everyone who has contributed to the project and share with them what I’ve learnt – I’ll do this as an in-person meeting and also as an online meeting, to allow as many people as possible to attend. This is how we run the PPI meetings and it seemed like the most logical way to include as many people as possible 🙂

I’m hoping to hold the feedback meeting in December, and then I can include comments and reflections from the feedback meeting in my final academic paper, which will cover the whole project from beginning to end.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to hear the outcome of my application for an NIHR Pre-Application Support Grant. The aim of the grant is to pay for some time, training, supervision and resources to put together an application for an NIHR Fellowship. The funding would release me for one day a week for six months, and I’m meant to be told whether I was successful in October (this month). However, I found out today that the proposed list of successful applicants hasn’t yet been sent to the Department for Health and Social Care (who need to sign off the funding) and I’m told that it can take between 4-6 weeks after sign off before applicants are notified. Without knowing whether I have the grant, I can’t apply for training courses or other related research options, so I’m kind of in limbo until I get an answer…

Until then, I can access help and advice from the Research Support Service or RSS. I attended a really useful webinar today called the Fellowship Application Day, hosted by the RSS which went through all the aspects of applying for a Fellowship in considerable detail. I have a much clearer idea now of what they’re looking for and the scope of what might be possible within a Fellowship. Even though I don’t know the status of my grant application, I can continue to do the prep work in the background and make good use of the time!

Onward and upward!