We have a new venture we’re undertaking within Doncaster & Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals, aimed at engagement with staff who are at a very early stage of research interest, which we have identified as “research curious”. The Trust’s research department understandably have put a lot of effort into engaging with staff who are already research active. As a member of the Trust’s Clinical Academic Research Steering Group I could see there were stages before research active, since before research active you have to be research interested, and before interested comes research curious. Ideas started fizzing at that point, so I took a meeting action to consider it further and come up with a plan.
Key to the plan was Nickie our Education Lead Nurse for Research, and Hannah our Clinical Therapies Research Lead. We already knew each other from other projects and in the initial meeting much fun was had playing around with a “brand” for our initiative. We discussed a way to collect up people who came to the library for search skills training etc to support their masters dissertations, and also how to find people on wards and in departments who are a little bit “research curious”, which could include those wanting to carry out service improvement. This sparked lots of ideas about how to engage with these people and “fan the flames” to move them along the pathway from research curious to research interested to research active.
Initially we set up a “research curious” email address where people can ask questions and seek advice, which was advertised on the staff intranet and staff Facebook group. Then we thought about holding coffee mornings (which we intended to call Curiosity Cafes) to enable curious people to come and chat, and meet like-minded staff. We soon realised that what we really needed to do first was to get out and meet these research curious people, not just sit back and wait for them to email or come to us, even for free cake, as to do that needs a level of research interest, not just curiosity. So we wondered, what if we went to find them, and made them a cup of coffee and had a chat? And the mobile Curiosity Café was born.
Special ingredients – tea trolley, hot drinks and cake, essentially. Plus Keely, fab admin person in Research who had access to everyone’s diaries and made us an action log and a MS Teams channel and does her best to keep us co-ordinated. We worked our contacts and the Lead Clinical Scientist (who is a massive library supporter) said Pathology coffee room at Doncaster Royal Infirmary (DRI) could be our pilot venue. Grace the directorate Comms person created an intranet page and a poster to send to Pathology with a QR code for the intranet page. I baked a carrot cake, and we were good to go.
Pathology was quickly followed by the multi-disciplinary therapy team from Rehab 1 at Montagu Hospital then Physio outpatients at DRI, Ward A4 (stroke / acute care) at Bassetlaw Hospital, Coronary Care at both DRI and Bassetlaw. That trolley got everywhere thanks to Nickie’s capacious car boot.
You may well be wondering why the Knowledge & Library Service is involved at all? It all started with my observation that I was ideally placed to carry out some research talent spotting amongst Masters students looking for database search skills training. It was obvious that some of them are really invested in their topic and have all the right attributes to make good clinical academic researchers. The trick is to catch them in the right state of mind, and be able to direct them to the right sources of advice, support, funding etc.
Besides, some questions are right up my street! Our Lead Clinical Scientist attended the Pathology curiosity café and asked me about providing specialist support for some of her staff undertaking their Fellow of the Royal College of Pathology level one exam, and I now facilitate a monthly journal club for clinical scientists (yes, exactly as terrifying initially as it sounds, but has rapidly turned into something rather wonderful! Find out more at YoHHLNet’s Christmas event 2024 if you are round my neck of the woods…).
A Speech & Language therapist at our Montagu Hospital visit asked about advice on engaging with stroke survivors in a patient engagement project – Hannah the Clinical Therapies Research Lead recommended a particular book by an expert on seldom heard voices in patient feedback, and our Knowledge and Library Service Knowledge & Resources Specialist made it available as an ebook the following day – perfect for our requestor as she was rarely on site at DRI.
The Curiosity Café has given me unparalleled access to clinical teams and departments and I’ve been leaving library business cards in tea rooms all over the Trust. It has further strengthened our connections with research staff in the Trust, and leading the Curiosity Café as a work stream for the Clinical Academic Steering Group at the Trust means great visibility for the Knowledge & Library service, and is really bringing to life one of our KLS strategic priorities to further a “research for all” culture within the Trust.
On an ongoing basis we try to gauge impact, and follow up attendees to see what happened as a result of their attendance at a Curiosity Café event. We are very happy that we are reaching staff who would not have otherwise have made contact with the research department through more conventional routes. I presented on our initiative at HLG Conference in London earlier this year, and felt that it had sparked quite a lot of interest from other Trusts.
Our future plans include holding Curiosity Café Coffee Mornings where amongst other things, we’ll have some people presenting on their dissertations, (not limited to clinical staff – plenty of non-clinical staff are studying and have studied for advanced qualifications). This would provide presentation practice (useful for future conference attenders) and lead nicely into the support the library already offers for Writing for Publication as the next step. We may also be taking the Curiosity Café “super mobile” as there is interest from some our local place partners too. We might also be branching out into a series of “Curious Conversations” where topic specialists will do half hour online “surgeries” to respond to queries such “what do clinical academic careers look like?” or “where and how can I apply for research funding?”
This is how we sign off on our intranet page.
“You are welcome at one of our events whatever your job role and how ever far along the research curious path you have travelled. Bring your curiosity, come and have a drink and a conversation, because you just never know where it might lead! “
Sarah Gardner
Clinical Evidence Specialist, Doncaster & Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals
sarah.gardner11@nhs.net
