Oxford

This internship offers a chance to examine gendered health experiences in primary care from patient and healthcare professional perspectives. Working with data collected during an NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowship, the student will lead a secondary analysis on a theme of their choosing. The dataset includes interviews with 32 people living with recurrent and chronic vulval pain (including women, non-binary people, and gender fluid people) and 25 healthcare professionals working across sexual health and primary care. Examples of possible themes could include exploring shame and stigma in health experiences, at-home diagnostics, digital health, temporal studies, and clinician-patient relationships.

This project is grounded in patient accounts, qualitative research, and feminist methodologies. The student will gain hands-on experience with analysing data, learning how researchers turn interviews into evidence that can shape clinical practice, training, and health policy. Training will be provided throughout the internship and no prior knowledge is expected.

The student will also be invited to attend (and help facilitate if of interest) meetings and interviews with patient representatives, community groups, and key stakeholders, where they will develop their communication skills and help ensure that our research generates impact. They will also have the opportunity to meet with stakeholders at Medical Herstory, a social impact organisation which supports gender health research.

Possible outputs from this study include publishing a visual summary/infographic, blog, conference poster, presentation or an academic paper, based on student interest.

The internship sits within a multidisciplinary primary care research team focused on antibiotic stewardship in the management of respiratory tract infections. The intern will support two projects: 1) a qualitative study of young people’s help-seeking for acute Respiratory Tract Infections (RTIs), and 2) the ‘SPARROW’ evaluation of diagnostic testing for Lower Respiratory Tract Infections (LTRIs) in Wales.

The young people’s study explores how individuals aged 18-24 in the UK manage acute respiratory tract infections and make decisions about seeking care, using semi-structured interviews.
The intern will familiarise themselves with relevant literature and study protocols and support early-stage qualitative analysis of anonymised interview data. This will include contributing to coding discussions and early theme refinement. The intern will also support Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) activities with an established young people’s panel including preparation of materials, supporting meeting facilitation and documentation of feedback.

The SPARROW study is a mixed-method evaluation generating real-world evidence on the use of C-reactive protein (CRP) point-of-care tests (POCTs) to guide antibiotic prescribing for LTRIs. The study examines how diagnostic testing is implemented and used in primary care across Wales, and develops and evaluates interventions to support appropriate POCT use and antibiotic prescribing. The intern will support intervention development activities, including involvement in co-design workshops with clinicians and patients, and contribute to analysis of workshop data using a framework approach.

Through these activities, the intern will gain experience in qualitative research, intervention development and PPIE activities, while working within a multidisciplinary team focused on antimicrobial stewardship, health behaviours and experiences of infection management.

An evidence synthesis of publicly available risk prediction tools to complement cancer screening

Cancer screening programmes aim to identify cases of cancer or pre-cancer in the general population in order to prevent future disease or to improve treatment outcomes by detecting disease at an earlier stage. Recent advances in digital health innovations have resulted in a growing number of digital tools, including smartphone and web apps, which have the potential to benefit cancer screening by providing information about cancer risks directly to patients and the public [1, 2].

The aim of the project will be to synthesise existing evidence on digital tools designed to complement cancer screening programmes, focusing on tools that can be used by patients and the public and which incorporate a risk prediction component. The review will aim to summarise: 1) methods used to develop the risk prediction tools [3, 4], 2) predictive performance of the models [3], and 3) impact of the digital tools on the effectiveness of cancer screening. Depending on the number of articles identified in preliminary literature searches the project scope may be modified by restricting to selected cancer types, settings (e.g. country), or measures of impact. It is intended that the completed review will be submitted for publication.

The intern will be involved in all stages of the review including designing and performing literature searches, article screening, data extraction, and writing. The project will provide practical experience of evidence synthesis methodology and enable the intern to learn about digital health and risk prediction in the context of cancer prevention.

Our research in the Workforce and Learning Research Group supports a portfolio of nationally-funded realist reviews focused on NHS primary care workforce and learning.

Realist reviews aim to understand how, why, for whom, and in what circumstances interventions or ways of working produce particular outcomes. This placement offers an undergraduate intern a structured introduction to realist thinking with one of our researchers, while contributing meaningfully to ongoing research.

We have a number of active research projects and experience of welcoming and supervising previous SPCR interns within our cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional team. We can tailor to individual SPCR intern interests, and the specific time-point they select for their internship. Opportunities to contribute to or extend our ongoing realist reviews include:

• workforce sustainability (working with the Workforce Voices research partnership) e.g. the evolving role of receptionists in general practice, the primary–secondary care interface in under-served areas
• relational continuity of care
• compound pressures in general practice.

Tailored Internship Activities
Activities and outcomes are customisable to intern interests, including:

• Realist Methodology: An overview of the realist approach with key readings and papers.
• Collaboration: Working with national/international research teams, stakeholders, and PPI members.
• Evidence Synthesis: Hands-on experience with screening, analysis, and developing programme theories (Context, Mechanism, Outcome, Configurations CMOCs).
• Dissemination: Creating accessible materials like visual narratives or infographics.
• Learning Outcomes
• Methodological Skills: Introductory understanding of realist and evidence synthesis methods.
• Professional Experience: Working on "live" health services research within a prestigious primary care department.
• Sector Knowledge: Insight into workforce issues in under-served areas.
• Impact: Understanding how evidence informs workforce policy and practice.
• Communication: Skills in translating complex findings for diverse audiences.

I am recruiting an intern to work within the Oxford Tobacco Addiction Group (OxTAG) on our exciting trial, ‘SAVINGS’. SAVINGS aims to understand whether giving someone who smokes very brief advice (VBA) on stopping smoking in routine financial advice services like housing associations makes them more likely to quit than someone who does not receive the advice.
The intern will be invited to work with me, Amelia, an expert qualitative researcher, to analyse interviews on participants’ experiences with the VBA. They will focus on understanding whether participants found the VBA acceptable to determine whether the intervention could be scaled up into routine financial advice services. I will support the intern to summarise their findings in a blog for our Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine website. Where possible, I will also support them to produce a high-quality abstract for presentation at an academic conference. I have a superb record of mentoring novice qualitative researchers.
I will support the intern to gain experience with monitoring fidelity to trial processes by listening to audio-recordings to verify that the advice is delivered as intended in the intervention group and not inadvertently delivered in the control group. They will participate in meetings with our national collaborators to discuss their findings and gain experience with the real-time operations of running a trial, while I also support them to pursue their own development. I will strongly encourage the intern to attend our OxTAG meetings to network and learn about the diverse research/ methods used within the wider team.