SPCR Trainee Blog Post: Reflections on a visit to Parliament

FRANCESCA DAKIN DPhil Student Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences

Francesca Dakin, one of our SPCR Trainees, reflects on her recent visit to UK Parliament presenting findings of the Remote by Default 2 study.

On Wednesday 24 April I was fortunate to be invited to share my DPhil findings with policymakers and system-wide stakeholders at a collaborative event held at the House of Commons in Westminster, organised by the Remote by Default 2 project at Oxford and the Nuffield Trust, and supported by Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and Dr James Davies, MP for Vale of Clwyd.

I attended to discuss my doctoral research, generously supported by NIHR’s School for Primary Care Research, which has contributed to several streams of the RBD2 project. Trish Greenhalgh (my PhD supervisor and PI of the project) shared the central findings of the wider RBD2 project, focused on remote care's safety, quality, equity, and staff impacts. We also invited two co-researchers and participants, Nadia Swann and Emma Ladds, to share their experiences of remote general practice as 1) a patient and 2) a GP partner who trained during the pandemic.

My SPCR-funded doctoral research has contributed to several of these streams, papers hyperlinked:

1. Leading work on the impact of remote technologies on equity in access and triage, and how digital facsimiles of patients interfere with their candidacy for care.
2. Leading work on the unique skills support staff offer GP teams, and how practices can better support them.
3. Reflecting on the place of remote care in modern general practice.
4. Leading work on how general practice teams navigate change and crisis collectively (awaiting publication).
5. Contributing to work focused on the quality of remote consultations (awaiting publication).
6. Contributing to work on the safety of remote care in general practice, and how safety is achieved.

Without the support of the SPCR, my research would not have been possible. The training we are provided as part of the NIHR Academy, and within the SPCR specially, provided me with communication skills to engage with this broad network of researchers, system stakeholders, and policymakers. As we are now focused on translating our research into practical impact, we’ve been working on several public-facing resources, which are slowly coming out on our project website: https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/research/groups-and-centres/interdisciplinary-research-in-health-sciences/remote-by-default-2/project-resources

Alongside the academic outputs from my PhD (including journal articles and the thesis), I’ve been working on: practical guidance for practice leaders to identify the unique value of their support staff, and support them in return; a practice-focused resource for identifying patients who may struggle to articulate their digital candidacy, and; developing my DPhil research into a training package to support better team navigation of change, crisis, and innovation in GP.

I look forward to developing this work further and building upon the skills I have gained as an SPCR Trainee, hopefully continuing to contribute to NIHR community.