NIHR Clinical Doctoral Fellowship Success

Congratulations to Margaret Coffey and Liesl Wandrag who recently achieved NIHR Clinical Doctorial Fellowship Awards.  The NIHR / CNO Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship (C-DRF) represents the doctoral training element of the Clinical Academic Training Pathway, which is being implemented to support those graduate nurses, midwives and allied health professionals who are committed to developing a career which combines research and continued clinical practice. The pathway integrates with and shares the goals of the NIHR and its aim to benefit patients, the NHS and improve clinical practice.

This is a new award scheme and so both Margaret and Liesl are in the first round of award winners and since the Trust got 3/15 of the awards it is a great achievement for us. 

Both award-holders are looking forward to starting work on their projects.

Margaret: “The fellowship allows me to take 3 years out of clinical work to work on a full time PhD through Imperial College.  This fits into my career plan because I am passionate about increasing evidence based practice in Head and Neck Cancer, particularly swallowing rehabilitation. I have worked in both the UK and US learning about best practice in these areas. I have always wanted to do a PhD but this fellowships offers me a unique opportunity to pursue a doctorate based on a clinical subject and fits with the trust's goals of increasing academic excellence.”

The title of her research project is: An examination of the clinical utility of Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES) as an evaluation tool in Laryngectomy and an investigation of the effect of different voice prostheses on swallow, voice function and quality of life after Laryngectomy.

Margaret will be supervised by Dr Mary Hickson and Mr Neil Tolley.

Liesl:  “This exciting opportunity as a Clinical Doctoral Research Fellow will help me to develop the skills required to become an independent researcher and dedicate a career to clinical research. As a dietitian in critical care I see patients losing a lot of muscle mass and we know that preservation of skeletal muscle as a metabolic reserve is very important for patient survival. Over the next three years I will be investigating when would be the best time to feed a patient on ICU along with an intervention to minimise the muscle mass loss that they experience.”

The title of her research project is: Inflammatory and nutritional changes during critical illness with a method of attenuating muscle mass loss

Liesl will be supervised by  Dr Mary Hickson and Professor Gary Frost.