Can research development bursaries for patient and public involvement have a positive impact on grant applications? A UK-based, small-scale service evaluation

BACKGROUND

Increasingly, research grant awarding bodies are regarding involvement at all stages of research, including prior to funding, as good practice. However, it is unclear how researchers should pay for this. Therefore, a pre-funding bursary scheme was designed. Up to £500 could be requested for involvement to develop a grant application for which user involvement is a key requisite for the funding body concerned. As the bursary scheme had run for 2 years, an evaluation was conducted to ascertain whether the scheme was effective for incorporating early involvement and in developing the grant proposal.

RESULTS

Twelve applications were made of which all were funded. The mean amount requested was £432.91; with the mean amount awarded £308.72. The involvement activities conducted all used qualitative methodology. Feedback regarding the bursaries was positive: enabling refinement of the research question and design; developing dialogue between the service users and the researchers; and helping with team building, with service users sometimes becoming co-applicants or members of the steering groups. The bursaries provided a learning opportunity – about involvement for the researchers and about research for the service users. The ultimate aim of the scheme was to enhance the research grant. Regarding this, the involvement paid for by the bursary meant that applicants could complete the involvement sections with in-depth information and clarity.

CONCLUSION

For a relatively small financial outlay, appropriate involvement was made possible at an important part of the research process which is usually neglected due to lack of funding. Recommendations for implementation made.

Nurturing the Seeds of Change: Strengthening the Lifestyle Medicine Movement With the Donald A. Pegg Student Leadership Award

Student-led Lifestyle Medicine Interest Groups (LMIGs) empower the next generation of healthcare professionals to tackle the pandemic of lifestyle-related chronic diseases and provide important pathways to increasing the visibility of Lifestyle Medicine (LM) in health professions schools. Each year, the Donald A. Pegg Student Leadership Award offers four allied health students a seed grant to start or support LMIGs at their schools as well as financial assistance to attend the annual American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) conference. The 2017 student winners were Paresh Jaini, Albert Barrera, Alyssa Greenwell, and Alicja Baska. With the support of the Pegg Award, the awardees and their faculty advisors have made great strides in LM at their institutions in the areas of research, community outreach, student education, and global networking. Their LMIG activities have included students presenting research at national conferences, initiating a chapter of the national organization Walk with a Doc, hosting educational lectures on LM principles, sponsoring plant-based cooking sessions, facilitating stress management workshops, and hosting a national-level LM congress in Europe. Through the ACLM, the Pegg Award generates an atmosphere of growth for LMIGs, fostering the expansion, vision, and integration of LM into the education of health professions students worldwide.

Pedagogical value of a hospitality awards programme

Objective

Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), the leading university hospital in France, proposed to offer its services to candidate on a voluntary basis for a hospitality award, certifying compliance to a 240-item home-made questionnaire designed by healthcare providers and patients’ representatives. It combined an objective examination of the services and patients’ questionnaires, covering seven domains: reception and information from admission to discharge; cleanliness, comfort and environment; proposed services (eg, access to Wi-Fi); culture, relaxation and well-being; meals; linen and relationship quality with hospital staff. The procedure was completed in two steps: an initial self-evaluation to detect improvable deficiencies, followed by an awarding visit. A service received the hospitality award if at least 80% of the reference criteria were met during this second evaluation. Here, we describe the construction of this hospitality awards programme and present a comparison of the scores obtained during the two steps.

Design and methods

Retrospective comparison by usual statistical tests.

Setting

AP-HP, grouping 39 university hospitals (21 000 beds, 8 million annual patient visits).

Participants

The 211 services from 29 different hospitals engaged in the procedure (2017–2019).

Results

Only one service did not get the award (self-evaluation 83%, visit score 79%). The score was higher during the awarding visit (89.0%±5.6%) than during self-evaluation (85.5%±4.3%, n=211, p<0.00001), with increased scores for the following domains (p<0.005): patient reception and information; cleanliness, comfort and environment; proposed services; culture, relaxation and well-being.

Conclusion

(1) Internal self-evaluation is feasible. (2) By diffusing criteria of hospitality, the procedure had a pedagogical value leading to rapid and significant improvements. (3) This quality assessment procedure results in an award that can be posted in the departments. By appealing to pride, this procedure should promote hospitality in hospitals.

The Society of Vascular Surgery International Scholars Program: The First Decade

OBJECTIVE

The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) is a not-for-profit medical society, whose goal is to further advance in vascular health on a global scale. With its 10th anniversary in sight, we were interested in analyzing the impact of a specific scholarship given under the SVS, the International Scholars Program. Our goal was to examine the awardees' characteristics and academic productivity.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We measured the number of peer-reviewed articles, before and after the program, using PubMed® and Google Scholar® (2008-2018) of the scholarship recipients. Editorials, book chapters, letter to editor, and oral/poster presentations were excluded. A survey was sent out to assess the awardees' current status.

RESULTS

The average number of applicants/year was 15.4 (standard deviation ± 6.69), with 17.5% females and a mean age of 37 ± 3.37 years, with 5.6 ± 2.30 years status post vascular fellowship. Brazil had the highest number of recipients (n = 5; 18.5%) followed by China (n = 4; 14.8%). No significant difference was noted between each country in terms of publications (P = .45), nor with after the SVS scholarship program compared to before (P = .14, 1.84 vs 2.76). The survey concluded 33% had attended a subsequent SVS meeting after the program, with 27% having presented their research (n = 15). The recipients noted the program helped adopt new practices in clinical management (n = 13, 87%), learn new procedures (n = 10, 67%), gain local/regional leadership (n = 9, 60%), and improve technical skills (n = 8, 53%). The most visited clinical sites were Massachusetts General Hospital and Mayo Clinic (n = 4, 27%). The program was given a 9.1/10 rating.

CONCLUSION

The program was successful in maintaining academic productivity by continuing to publish research even after the scholarship, while teaching recipients skills to further improve their career goals. The award remains a competitive process that selects highly skilled recipients and still has much growth and progress to look forward to over the next decade.

Certifying Gender Equality in Research: Lessons Learnt From Athena SWAN and Total E-Quality Award Schemes

In the past 2 decades, many Certification and Award schemes (CAS) related to gender equality, diversity and inclusion have emerged in the higher education, research and industry sectors. According to a recent report, there are as many as 113 CAS which have been identified across Europe and beyond. These CAS aim at addressing inequalities in relation to the grounds of sex, gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability among others. The high number of CAS, and their continued growth, has taken place in parallel to the shift of policies and efforts from "fixing individuals" to "fixing the system." In these schemes, gender equality is often understood as a structural, systemic challenge, with a recognition that advancing gender equality is complex and requires drivers and interventions at micro, meso and macro level. Studies focused on analysing and evaluating gender equality initiatives in higher education have been scarce, and often limited to specific schemes. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a better understanding of the CAS landscape through comparing two of the main gender equality schemes used by research-performing organisations in Europe Athena SWAN (in the UK) and Total E-Quality Award (in Germany). Based on qualitative interviews with stakeholders across Europe and document analysis, this paper focuses on strengths, challenges faced by and the impact of these CAS. This comparative exercise highlights particular learning points that can inform potential reviews of existing schemes and/or the development of new schemes such as a Europe-wide scheme. The latter is the focus of a Horizon 2020 project entitled CASPER (Certification-Award Systems to Promote Gender Equality in Research), which aims at making recommendations to the European Commission as to the feasibility of a Europe-wide CAS for gender equality in research organisations.

Impact of an institutional grant award on early career investigator applicants and peer reviewers

BACKGROUND

Obtaining research funding support is integral to a successful career in science. Training and practice in grant writing, as well as engagement in peer review of grant applications may help lead to successful research funding. However, there is little evidence on the impact of institutional programs on the career development of early career investigators (ECIs).

OBJECTIVES

Understand the impact of participation in an institutional research award program on the career development of ECIs.

METHODS

The Cardiovascular Research Institute of Vermont established an Early Career Research (ECR) award program in 2018. ECIs who participated as applicants or reviewers in the first 3 years of the program (2018-2020) were surveyed to understand the impact of the ECR award program on their grant writing and professional development.

RESULTS

Ninety-four percent of 17 applicants and 90% of 19 reviewers completed the survey. Ninety-two percent of funded and 75% of unfunded applicants, and 87% of reviewers reported that the program was beneficial to their professional development. Similarly, 85% of funded applicants, 75% of unfunded applicants, and 80% of reviewers reported improvement in their grant-writing skills. All respondents reported they would recommend the ECR award program to their peers.

CONCLUSIONS

This single-institution ECR award program had a positive impact on ECI's professional development and grant-writing skills and may lead to further extramural funding opportunities.