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Current Research at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability

Current Research at the RHN

New studies

The team on Jack Emerson ward led by Professor Philippe Jolliet is doing a descriptive study of tracheotomised ventilator-dependent patients in a specialised long-term care unit. The second project, building on the first, will explore ‘quality of life in ventilator- dependent patients in a specialised long-term care unit as perceived by patients, families and caregivers’.

Our Dental team have published their completed studies

Prasad R, Daly B, Manley MCG.(2019) Effect of daily manual toothbrushing with 0.2% chlorhexidine gel on pneumonia-associated pathogens in adults living with profound neuro-disability. Access Microbiology. Oct 21;1(10)

Manley MCG, Doshi M. (2020)The importance of oral health and the value of dental care in the process of rehabilitation for people with complex neuro-disability. Disability and Rehabilitation. Sep 15:1-2

Current PhD students supported by the RHN

Amy Pundole, Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist, gave a successful online open lecture in June and has had her first paper published.

Pundole A, Varley R, Beeke S (2020) ‘Assessing emergence from prolonged disorder of consciousness: Current opinion and practice in the UK’ Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. May 13: 1-25.

Alex Rose, Principal Clinical Psychologist, was commended by her annual review panel at University of Glasgow for “the progress she has made in the most difficult of circumstances”. Her study, looking at the assessment of mood and psychological well-being in people with severe brain injury, has received funding this year from the Frances and Augustus Newman Foundation.

Update on our five-year research strategy

Our commitment to advance research and education at the RHN has been inevitably impacted by the pandemic. All of our onsite training events were unfortunately cancelled at the beginning of March, limiting our ability to disseminate our research make the desired impact we had hoped to make this year.

Despite this, the RHN has made huge strides in making our events, training and lectures digitally accessible. We have successfully expanded this over the past few months and are now able to offer a range of online training, courses and open lectures. The first events have been very popular with our first online lecture attracting over 230 attendees. Online training has also seen international as well as national participation.

We are dedicated to slowly migrating our events, training and lectures to online platforms and continue to develop new events both internally and externally so we are able to share best practice and progress.

Overview on strategy progress

  • There is at least one project under each research theme.
  • Research culture is being successfully nurtured with four PhD students and one post-doctoral student.
  • While resources have not been impacted by the pandemic yet, impact and dissemination have been. We have adapted to focus on online courses and lectures, but need to go a step further and maximise our online presence internally and externally.