NIHR Infrastructure Doctoral Research Training Camp.


In July 2018 I attended the annual National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Infrastructure Doctoral Research Training Camp. I thought that I’d share some thoughts and reflections on this summer camp, if anyone else is thinking of attending.

What is the camp?
As the name suggests, it is an annual training camp for students doing doctoral studies (such as a PhD. The 'infrastructure' bit means that you have to be working as part of the NIHR Academy. This includes a number of things, such as the research schools and biomedical research centres. I am working with the Health Economics and Outcome Measurement theme of the Yorkshire and Humber Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (I should try fitting that onto a name badge one day...) hence I was eligible to attend. Attendance is by invitation only: you have to write a letter saying why you think you should go to apply. Luckily I was chosen to attend.

The camp has a different theme each year. For 2018 it was "Attracting Further Research Funding", and the camp was held at Ashridge House. As far as venues go, it was certainly the nicest one that I've been to! It was certainly the type of place you want to go to during the summer heatwave (tho is it the most memorable venue I've been to? That award probably goes to a workshop that was held in a prison...)

How did the camp work?
The camp was held over three days. The first day included posters and presentations from trainees, along with a number of useful talks from NIHR experts. You also get assigned to a multidisciplinary team, and an opportunity to meet your new colleagues.
The second day was, to put it mildly, busy! Your newly formed team is provided with details of a (fictional) funding stream. You then have to decide on a topic for your grant proposal and fully develop all aspects of it (including research design, public involvement, dissemination, and costing) from scratch. All in one day. To help, a very large timer counting down to the 5pm submission deadline was provided...
There were also a number of advice sessions with experts that could be booked, as well as masterclasses on ‘presentation skills for panel interviews’ and ‘the art of framing your research question’. There was a real opportunity cost here - how much time do you spend developing your research proposal vs attending the advice sessions and masterclasses (and who do you send)? Thankfully, each group also had a senior mentor. Our was Professor Catherine Exley, who was fantastic.
The third day consisted of each team presenting their proposal to a panel, and gaining feedback.

Benefits of attending
If I had to sum-up the camp in one sentence, it would be: its very intense, but I definitely recommend it! Its a great opportunity for developing your skills - both in preparing a submission (an entire proposal in one day!) as part of a multidisciplinary team and attending very interesting talks and advice sessions. Having an experienced NIHR mentor was very useful, and it provided very good experience in working to pressure. You also get to meet lots of great people, I found it very interesting to see the diverse range of research that people are involved in within the NIHR Academy. Having such a nice venue and food also helps...



Some top tips.
I thought that I'd end by sharing a few tips that I picked-up during the camp.

  • Be aware of the funding streams available. The NIHR were particularly keen on promoting the new Development and Skills Enhancement Award for current award holders, as well as the Short Placement Award for Research Collaboration. There is also the option to apply to tier 3 of the Research for Patient Benefit programme, which can be viewed as an alternative to a training award for early career researches.
  • We received a lot of useful advice to help avoid rejection. A lot of it is common-sense, but the fact that many applications still get rejected for these reasons shows that its important to explicitly consider these things. This includes demonstrating that the topic matters, having a well-defined, focused research question (ideally supported by initial work), using suitable methods and providing sufficient detail on these to show that you know what you are doing (and what the potential risks are).
  • Public involvment is a very important aspect of any submission: be clear and weave public involvement throughout the application. The public don't have to do everything, but you need to have thought about it. Also be aware of the National Standards for Public Involvement.



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