East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust: A decade of collaboration with CRN Greater Manchester

At East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT), we are proud to deliver research to our patients. Over the past decade we have gone from strength to strength, increasing the portfolio of studies we offer to patients as well as increasing the number of patients recruited to research. CRN Greater Manchester have helped ELHT to continue to grow and realise our research ambitions as a research-active organisation. This has enabled our patients to have wider access to clinical research across many specialities to improve care and treatment. 

CRN Greater Manchester have been a useful resource providing training such as Good Clinical Practice, research essentials and informed consent. Communication with the team was excellent. ELHT is a bit further afield geographically to other CRN Greater Manchester partner organisations but despite the distance we always felt included and considered. One thing we would love to see in the future is more engagement with the non-clinical workforce who are instrumental to successful clinical research delivery. 

We appreciate the support from CRN Greater Manchester research nurses and research practitioners. They have helped with the delivery of our portfolio on numerous occasions. During COVID-19, we pulled together as a system to set up Urgent Public Health trials at such speed and efficiency. It has been a huge privilege for all of us to deliver important research trials such as Recovery, Priest, ISARIC and many others, that supported our patients and their families. Post-pandemic, CRN Greater Manchester's staff help has been instrumental in restarting of the non-COVID-19 related research activity at ELHT. 

More recently, ELHT has worked with CRN Greater Manchester and other organisations from the region as part of the GM Strategic Collaborative Regional Working Group and the GM flexible Workforce: Vaccine Pathway. We are building on the work of the COVID-19 vaccine research delivery programme to strengthen local infrastructure to support large scale vaccine trials across GM.

CRN Greater Manchester make us feel we are a valued and respected partner. We engage with CRN Greater Manchester colleagues for horizon scanning and sharing knowledge. ELHT staff are proud to be part of CRN Greater Manchester. We have seen many different facets of the CRN Greater Manchester and the support given with shaping the research landscape at ELHT.

Funding from the NIHR has only been one aspect of support which has enabled us to grow and develop. Collaborative working across the GM footprint, training and development opportunities through NIHR Learn, all have been fundamental to where we are today.

We would like to thank and wish well all our GM colleagues as we move to the new chapter of the NIHR in Regional Research Delivery Network.

Ola Metryka 

Research and Innovation Operations Manager

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust 

(Pictured, above, are members of the ELHT team at the Greater Manchester Health and Care Research Awards 2023)