CRN Greater Manchester with North West Ambulance Service: Delivering research in the urgent and emergency care setting

Delivering research in the urgent and emergency care setting with North West Ambulance Service – Sandra Igbodo, Research Manager

Since 2010, I have gained extensive research management experience in the NHS, higher education institutions and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).  I was excited to join North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) NHS Trust in 2018 as their first ever Research Manager and I’ve enjoyed being able to apply my knowledge and skills to help grow NIHR CRN Portfolio research activity across the organisation.

I work alongside our Research Lead who is a Consultant Paramedic, our Senior Research Fellow, Research Paramedics and Research Support Officer to develop, set-up and deliver research with the support of colleagues across NWAS.

My first experience of NIHR clinical trial delivery with NWAS were the PRESTO (Pre-hospital Evaluation of Sensitive Troponin) and PASTA (Paramedic Acute Stroke Treatment Assessment) studies.  Carrying out clinical research in the pre-hospital environment can be challenging.  Our ambulance clinicians must make urgent and informed decisions to achieve the highest standards of safe, effective and patient-centred care alongside assessing whether a patient is eligible to take part in a clinical trial and deliver a research intervention during a healthcare emergency.

NWAS is also responsible for research governance on the behalf of the North West Air Ambulance (NWAA) Charity.  In 2023, NWAA opened SWiFT (Study of Whole blood in Frontline Trauma), it’s first NIHR clinical trial, a great achievement that I was thrilled to be involved in.

I’m very proud of our Research & Development (R&D) team and how we’ve grown research activity across NWAS, increasing the number of opportunities for our patients, staff the public to participate in NIHR CRN Portfolio studies.  This was achieved with the help of the NIHR Clinical Research Network Greater Manchester (CRN GM) and Research Delivery Manager, Joanne, who has worked closely with us to enhance our research infrastructure and research offer.  Since I joined NWAS,  we’ve hosted a national research conference, had the honour of being winners at the Greater Manchester Health and Care Research Awards and achieved our highest participant recruitment in the last year.

Thank you to CRN GM for the support you’ve provided to NWAS.  We’re looking forward to working in collaboration with Research Delivery Network North West and are excited to see where the NWAS research journey takes us next!

Sandra Igbodo 

Research Manager

North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) NHS Trust