As with all NHS Teams, 2020/21 has been an extraordinary year for the Academy team. Like others, we’ve had to adjust our ways and places of working, and in particular, how we’ve supported services across the Trust. Our 2020/21 Annual Report showcases some examples of the Research and Improvement work across the organisation over the past year.
A large number of our team were redeployed to support other services, both within the Trust and in the Wessex-wide vaccine research hubs. For those that weren’t redeployed, some highlights included:
running three COVID-related national trials, as part of the Urgent Public Health (UPH) programme,
leading the volunteer programme for the mass vaccination centres, and
running bespoke Quality Improvement training workshops virtually.
The team also ran a second evaluation of Solent's response to COVID-19, as well an evaluation of the vaccination programme which collected more than 39,500 responses.
In September we held our first virtual conference which saw more than 370 people join us online for a day of sharing knowledge and learning. Having had to cancel our traditional event in June, it was exciting to be able to organise the event differently and hear about many of the research and improvement projects that have taken place over the past year in Solent.
As ever, this was a Patients Included accredited event – it was planned and delivered in partnership with our Side-by-Side network, and the event was open to all of our patients and the public.
Other highlights included our research team winning the Wessex CRN award for Outstanding Team Contribution to Research for their work supporting the important SIREN study. The study is being led by Public Health England and is looking at healthcare workers’ immune response to COVID-19. We are also incredibly proud of Julian, a longstanding volunteer and Side-by-Side network member, who was nominated and short listed for Volunteer of the Year award for Clinical Audit Awareness Week (CAAW) 2021.