Growing your research delivery portfolio – Tips from an experienced site

Dr Nick Thomas, Windrush Medical Centre GP Partner, shares the practice’s research delivery journey from getting started, to growing the facilities and team. 

Why our practice got involved in research delivery  

I joined the practice in 2012, and we’ve been doing research ever since. Research delivery was an automatic choice for us at the time. We were a training practice and had a lot of extra services that we provided, so we felt like research would be a good next step for us to explore.  

Research is core to what we do in the NHS. It’s how we can improve healthcare for the future, and research delivery provides a viable way for general practice to support in this area.  

It quickly became apparent that our patients really enjoy it too. We have many patients that have great research experiences with us. We often get asked "what's our next study going to be?" and that's a brilliant aspect of being involved.  

There’s also the benefits research delivery has on our staff. It's so valuable to their professional development going forward. It keeps us all interested and on the cutting edge. When we first started delivering research at the practice, we didn't quite know what it was all about, but now it’s integral to what we do as a practice. 

Research portfolio & team structure  

Our current research portfolio is really varied and fascinating. We are now a highly regarded site across the country, where we're able to support really challenging complex studies including vaccine trials and new medication studies for all sorts of different medical conditions. We're also able to support new device development which provides amazing opportunities for our patients, and also participants from other practices regionally. 

To deliver research at scale, we’ve had to grow the team, and this hasn’t happened overnight by any means. Within the research team, we currently have a research manager, three pharmacists, a pharmacy technician, clinical trials assistants, lab assistants, research nurses and doctors who support the studies in the role of clinical trial investigators. 

Key challenges to consider 

Probably the number one thing would be time. Time is a problem for all of us, but trying to make sure you're delivering studies in a time appropriate manner is a huge aspect of this. You need to create time for yourself and time for your team in order to deliver research. But this is just a challenge and not a barrier, and we’ve found that the benefits of research delivery really drive us to create the capacity needed to enable us to do this work. 

Physical space is another key consideration when delivering research at scale. In terms of facilities, we have an allocated space for storage for medications (at room temperature and in fridges and freezers) and areas for pharmacy preparation of medications. We also have a space to enable us to carry out blood tests and clinical rooms to assess patients. And finally, you need enough room for the storage of all the paperwork connected to studies. There are sources of support that are available to help site set up. Always contact your regional research delivery network to see what support is available.  

Advice for other sites looking to grow their research portfolio 

My two top tips for growing a research portfolio are: 

Engagement 

Research delivery comes with lots of engagement whether it be patients, other practices regionally and study sponsors or organisations, such as academic departments and industry partners. So being responsive to emails, being available to offer them advice (on how feasible a study is at your site or in primary care generally) and becoming a central source of support for them is key to how you can really grow your site.  

Also engage with your regional research delivery network. In England that would be our NIHR regional research network who can offer support with all sorts of different training options (Good Clinical Practice, valid informed consent, etc).  

I would advise to also engage with mentorship schemes and the National Contract Value Review (NCVR) which supports with contracts and costings which of course is really important (saving so much time for a practice and give valuable support). RCGP Research Ready, is another tool you can engage with to help you and give you those ideas of how you can grow your site. 

Grow your team  

You can't do this by yourself. It takes lots of time to grow a research portfolio, but also to deliver the studies so you need a great team with expertise to enable you to do that. You're probably going to be growing it quite slowly over time, but investing in your team both in terms of resources and time is key to growing your practice research portfolio.  Notably growing a team can take years – we have built this team over the last 12 years adding infrastructure and research time for the entire team.  

For more resources on research delivery, visit the

RCGP Research Engagement Hub