I am getting ready to leave my post at the University of Edinburgh, as my contract is finally ending (I am very grateful to the funders and to the University that I was able to see the contract through its final few months, after having to take time out for maternity leave. I know that not all researchers on fixed-term contracts are so lucky). I do intend to keep up with this blog, although it will probably change focus a little as I will be returning to clinical practice, at least in the short term, although I am not abandoning academia entirely and still hope to write a bit here and there.
I did want to provide links, though, to a couple of articles that have been published recently from the qualitative work that I have been involved in. I haven’t written about the project up till now, and won’t go into detail as the trial is still ongoing (with final clinical and statistical data due to be collected later this year), but this article in BMJ Open by my colleagues outlines the REPOSE trial, the qualitative sub-study of which has been my work over the last nearly 3 years. REPOSE is a randomised controlled trial which is seeking to compare two types of treatment for Type 1 diabetes (multiple daily injections of insulin, or MDI, and insulin pumps) alongside structured education (the DAFNE – Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating – course) for both sets of patients. The qualitative study involved interviewing both patients and DAFNE educators about their experiences, with the hope that our findings can help with interpreting the final trial findings and add value to the overall trial outcome, as well as potentially influence good practice in both diabetes care and in clinical trials more generally.
The first qualitative article we published is in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, and is titled “Perceptions and experiences of using automated bolus advisors amongst people with type 1 diabetes: A longitudinal qualitative investigation”. This article is open access.
The second article, also open access, was published in Trials journal last month and quickly became highly accessed, something of which we are very proud, as clearly we have tapped into a very pertinent and important issue in trials work. The article is titled “Uncovering the emotional aspects of working on a clinical trial: a qualitative study of the experiences and views of staff involved in a type 1 diabetes trial”.
Jackie Kirkham 