An article published in the RCP’s Future Healthcare Journal has highlighted how greater team working and more fluid relationships across the research system at UCLH and UCL enabled a rapid and effective research response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Study authors Dr Cecilia Vindrola, Dr Dan Herron and Dr Nick McNally outline how boundaries that had previously been established between teams and responsibilities were modified to allow for different ways of working – ultimately to enable the fast-tracking of study review and set up.
The reshaping and remaking of boundaries between staff in the Joint Research Office (JRO), service support departments, Principal Investigators, other professional staff and patient representatives also led to an expanded team ethos, the authors found.
Changes to working practices included the set-up of a Covid-19 response group and separate Covid-19 strategy group right at the beginning of the pandemic – bringing together staff, investigators and patients who may have had more limited contact prior to the pandemic; and new processes for the review of studies with an emphasis on speed of response and individuals working together and beyond their ‘normal’ responsibilities.
And a new set of relations emerged between staff across the research system, with contact and communication between JRO staff and investigators closer and more seamless than ever before.
The study was based on interviews with JRO staff, academic and clinical researchers, and staff from service support departments.
It found Principal Investigators reflected mainly on positive experiences with the changes made in the JRO and beyond, as the review and approval of studies was faster. The JRO has previously been praised for the speed of study set up during the pandemic.
The authors said it was the unprecedented nature of the pandemic that led to the boundaries being teams and responsibilities being reshaped – but said the closer working relationships established during the pandemic should remain.
This could involve PIs being more active in the review process, and running more stages of review in parallel to save time, the authors said.
Read the article – Boundary work during COVID-19: The transformation of research review and set-up.
Dr Cecilia Vindrola is a Senior Research Fellow at UCL.
Dr Dan Herron is Head of Research Innovation at UCLH.
Dr Nick McNally is Managing Director, Research at UCLH/UCL.
