During the summer of 2025, Dr Matt Cooper and Dr Charlotte Richardson hosted four undergraduate and postgraduate students at Newcastle University to complete a research internship. Three of the interns have reflected on this experience.

Dr Matt Cooper and Dr Charlotte Richardson with Imogen Tate Neave Woolam, and Tom Collis

Imogen Tate (BSc Hons Psychology with Professional Placement)

I am currently a BSc Psychology with Professional Placement student going into my 4th year (stage 3), and this summer I completed a month internship working on the scoping review ‘Caring for the Carer: What are the active ingredients of interventions supporting informal carers’ wellbeing and welfare needs?’ under the supervision of Dr Matt Cooper.

 

I was supported to title and abstract screen using Rayyan, full-text screen and data extract, and conduct a promise analysis of the included papers. This experience has significantly developed my research skills for scoping/systematic review. Notably, I have enhanced my problem-solving skills for refining a research question throughout this process, as a high volume of papers were initially included; I enjoyed the collaborative nature of evaluating the project’s direction when problems arose. I am looking forward to seeing the meaningful impact on carer wellbeing that the project will have.

 

I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to attend the 2nd annual NIHR Newcastle PSRC and School of Pharmacy Conference 2025 in my first week, as it gave me great understanding of the scope of the work that is conducted within the department and provided insight into where my psychology background is advantageous.

 

I particularly valued working in such a welcoming and supportive environment surrounded by fellow interns and PhD students with such a wide range of research interests. This experience has reaffirmed that I would love to pursue a PhD one day and eventually a career that has a platform for both clinical and academic practice!

Neave Woollam (BSc Hons Psychology with Professional Placement)

I am currently an undergraduate psychology with professional placement year student at Newcastle University, and this summer I completed a four-week long internship supervised by Dr Matthew Cooper. The project was a scoping review looking at interventions to support carers’ wellbeing and welfare needs.

 

This created a great opportunity for me to develop my research and professional skills. Including learning to use a new software (Rayaan) to screen papers, doing data extraction and a promise analysis. When our original search returned an overwhelming number of papers, it was really interesting to see how the search was refined to deal with this. This gave me insight into how to tailor search strategies when conducting a scoping review.

 

I enjoyed working in an office alongside other interns and PhD students. I loved hearing about the different topics being researched and the range of methodologies being used to do so. It really opened my eyes up to the possibilities within pharmacy research and made me realise it’s not all lab based. I especially enjoyed hearing about the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) work that informed this review. Seeing the coproduced artwork really inspired me and made me think about PPI in research more creatively.

 

Overall, I hope to continue using the skills, knowledge and experience I have gained over this internship in my final year of university and in my career.

Tom Collis (MSc in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence)

Hi, my name is Tom, I am currently studying an MSc in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Newcastle University. Prior to this I studied Medicine at Newcastle University, and I subsequently completed my Foundation Years, and a Clinical Teaching Fellow Year. In June and July 2025 I undertook this fascinating research internship with the School of Pharmacy, under the supervision of Dr Richardson and Dr Cooper.

 

The internship project involved a systematic review exploring the roles and experience of caregivers in virtual wards. With the NHS aiming to move more care from inpatient hospitals into the community, virtual wards, with the support of caregivers, will be fundamental to facilitating this shift in the location of patient care. The role and experiences of caregivers within virtual wards is an under-researched area, and this systematic review aimed to provide an overview of the existing literature, and a guide for future research projects.

 

This internship was greatly rewarding, educational, and enjoyable. Working within a team of driven academics was inspiring and has further fuelled my passion for working within academia. Being based in the Newcastle Patient Safety Research Collaboration office gave me an insight into the valuable work being undertaken at Newcastle University, aimed towards improving patient safety and care. The skills and knowledge I have gained from the internship, in particular how to conduct a systematic review, have been invaluable, and have given me a strong foundation to build upon in my future training. Additionally, being involved in the design of the systematic review, and all stages of its undertaking, meant I developed an insight into the complex nature of carrying out research, and how obstacles can be overcome through teamwork, communication, and lateral thinking. I have no doubt that this experience has developed my research skills and will underlie all future work in academia that I hope to undertake. Thank you very much Dr Richardson and Dr Cooper for this opportunity, and your support!

By Dr Matt Cooper, NIHR Newcastle PSRC, Safer Integrated Health and Social Care Environments Theme Research Associate.

Over the past year of the Tilly Hale Carer Research Panel, we have met on several occasions both in person and online. The sessions have been hugely beneficial to both myself and our research team. The purpose of the group was to establish a collaborative space where carers could help priorities and set the agenda for the research we are doing within the school and patient safety group. Initially I found it difficult to work out how to ensure the group made an impact and how we could become sustainable beyond the funding. I worried that the group would not have a single direction, and I wanted to ensure I brought meaning and a purpose to the group. Looking back over the past year I think the group has made more impact that I initially would have realised. 

Since the group was established, I have had the absolute honour in being able to listen and learn from the experts in what caring should be about, the challenges they face, and where we need to be doing more to research to support the development of services. The carers in the group are passionate about providing the best support for the people they care for, while providing a selfless act of giving their time and energy, despite the challenges they face or the impact on their own health and wellbeing. 

The group has informed my thinking and critical review of research more that I had accredited before, and they have made me think more holsitically about the research we can do. Within our research team we now have 7 projects in this space including, student carers, carers involvement in medication management, carers involvement in hospital at home care, carer wellbeing, and support for ethnically marginalised carers. All these projects I believe have been informed by the panel and give thanks to them and their openness to support this. 

Of course, we are also working on an art piece which has been commissioned around what it means to be a carer, and below is an intial draft of this. This piece I hope can be sent far and wide to demonstrate the vitally important role carers play in the healthcare landscape and support the research we are doing. I thank the research panel for their honest reflection when developing this piece and I hope that it does justice to their experiences. 

By Prof Hamde Nazar, NIHR Newcastle PSRC

At the PSRC PhD SafetyNet event in March 2024, it became clear that were individual researchers and doctoral students investigating various safety aspects of a model of care known as virtual wards, currently gaining a lot of traction. Virtual wards, or hospital at home is not a new concept, but there has been increased drive to better manage patients in their home to avoid hospital admission and/or facilitate early discharge. Virtual wards allow patients of all ages to safely and conveniently receive acute care at their usual place of residence, including care homes.

After some corridor discussion, Prof Beth Fylan (Yorkshire and Humber PSRC) and Prof Hamde Nazar (Newcastle PSRC) decided to organise a collaborative Virtual Wards PSRC Safety Event.

In September, guest speakers, researchers, doctoral and pre-doctoral students across NIHR infrastructure were welcomed to the cross-PSRC Virtual Wards event in Newcastle University. The aim was to facilitate discussions to identify and develop research priorities and foster partnerships in this area of research.

Charlotte Lynch, Virtual ward Programme lead at NHS England.

The day was opened with an informative update by the virtual ward programme lead at NHS England, Charlotte Lynch. Charlotte provided an overview of the current evidence base and newly published Virtual Wards operational framework. It was recognised that there have been priority areas such as frailty, respiratory and heart failure and an increasing focus on children and young people. The national virtual wards team are keen to hear more evidence about what features of virtual wards are associated with positive outcomes and for which patients. There is interest to understand the longer-term impact on patients and establish how patient safety can be measured in this context.

Sophie McGlen then delivered interim findings on the barriers and enablers to implementation of virtual wards across the Midlands integrated care system. Sophie described the many factors across the system, organisation and practitioner levels that are important to consider around virtual ward implementation.

Maggie Westby provided an update on a realist review on virtual wards for patients with frailty. The key take home messages were around having more proactive care, keeping people safe and stable to prevent deterioration and potential crisis.

Representatives from four of the PSRCs (Newcastle, Yorkshire and Humber, Greater Manchester and North West London) showcased patient safety in virtual wards research projects.

Three round table discussions then focussed on:

Attendees agreed on some key areas that required further evidence. namely:

There was an appreciation that evaluations of virtual wards to date have been mainly single-site and observational in nature. There was a consensus that multi-site studies employing robust research designs, experimental where possible, are needed to improve the quality of the evidence base.

All attendees discussed the need for sustainable, well-resourced and diverse patient and public involvement to feed into all stages of the research process.

The final discussions of the day were to establish the next steps for this group given the shared interests and endeavours. There is an intention to set up a community of practice around patient safety in virtual wards where researchers can share, disseminate and signpost evidence and findings. The group are interested to explore the potential for collaboration for research and funding applications.

Researchers interested in joining the mailing list for the community of practice can contact Hamde Nazar from the Newcastle PSRC hamde.nazar@newcastle.ac.uk

Following on from this event, Prof Hamde Nazar has been invited to share the directions of research as identified by the PSRCs at a Virtual Wards sand pit event in October 2025 that is supported by the Advanced Care Research Centre based at the University of Edinburgh, the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) North East and North Cumbria and Newcastle University.