Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust (PHT) and the University of Portsmouth (UoP)
The PHT-UoP Partnership has gone from strength to strength in 2016. New Partnership Facilitator Matt Gummerson reflects on his first 12 months in post: “As a newcomer to both organisations I was thrilled with the energy and enthusiasm of everyone I met as we explored the potential of the PHT-UoP Partnership. What quickly became clear is that we have real strengths to build on, including nationally renowned research projects and valued clinical input into academic programmes. But there is also lots of untapped potential. Most importantly though, we have great people that are open to new ideas and excited about the possibilities of what we can achieve by working together.”
Partnership Plan on a Page
Looking ahead at what we hope to achieve in 2017, the PHT-UoP Partnership ‘Plan on a Page’ sets out the vision and key priorities. Our vision is to create a fusion of clinical and academic excellence to improve the health and welling of Portsmouth and our communities.
Thanks to all those that helped to shape this and the priorities that underpin it at the successful Collaboration Workshop we held in October. Around 40 invited individuals from across PHT and UoP worked together to identify the vision and priorities for the PHT-UoP Partnership in the years ahead. Senior representatives of PHT and UoP endorsed this plan at a recent Partnership Executive BoardExecutive and will now oversee efforts to turn these ideas into a real step-change in how the two organisations work together. We will keep you informed of progress throughout the year as we turn these priorities into reality – if you’ve got ideas or think you can help, we would love to hear from you.
Honorary appointments with the University of Portsmouth – new policy and guidance:
We have been working hard to improve how we award and support honorary titles for PHT staff who are actively engaged in collaborations at the University of Portsmouth. Honorary titles are an important way of rewarding individuals who are helping to achieve our shared goals such as growing research collaborations and providing students with the best clinical education. If you think this is you, have a look at the policyand guidanceto see how it can benefit you and what will be expected in return.
New research collaborations:
Congratulations to Consultant Matt Chandy and Researcher Karen Pilkington from SHSSW who successfully bid for £10k from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.In the ‘Time2Tap’ project they will be exploring whether young children who have not yet been toilet trained but that need a urine test can be induced to wee by tapping their tummies. This could reduce the time spent waiting in hospital before an infection can be tested for.
PHT and UoP are match-funding a PhD studentship for a new project to enable early detection of cancer in at-risk women. A charity donation has funded the purchase of a Personal Genome Machine (PGM) at the Hospital. IoliaAkaev is co-supervised by Dr Chopra from Pharmacy and Biomedical Science and Drs Yeoh and Rahimi from PHT. Early stages have seen two service evaluations around establishing the biomarkers as well as setting up and calibrating the PGM. This is hopefully just the start of an exciting programme of research, with an MSc student from UoP already having joined the teamG.
Meanwhile the successes of our more established research collaborations continue, with new collaborative grants applied for or planned in respiratory, renal and diabetes to name just a few. We are now looking at how we can jointly invest in the infrastructure to support more clinical trials in Portsmouth.
If you want to discuss your ideas for potential research collaborations with UoP contact (tel: ext4042) or the Research Office at QA Hospital on:
or x6236
Innovation update
PHT and the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries have teamed up to produce a series of videos and animations on the medical condition, Deep Vein Thrombosis. Mr. Simon Toh, consultant surgeon, was awarded funding from the Patient Safety Up Campaign and knew immediately that he wanted to collaborate with the staff and students from CCI. The funding will be used to produce an interactive leaflet that links to the videos and animations.Animation work is currently underway with one of lead characters, Gary, about to make his debut!
Representatives from the School of Health Sciences and Social Work (SHSSW) met colleagues from areas of the hospital where continuous professional development (CPD) needshad been identified. The University is now putting together a programme of learning that the Trust will commission and further opportunities are being explored.