Answering uncertainties from practice:research with children, parents, and health care professionals

Faith Gibson is Professor of Child Health and Cancer Care at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Surrey. She took up her current post, which is a joint appointment, in April 2016, she is Director for Research-Nursing and Allied Health at GOSH, lead of the research centre known as ORCHID (Centre for Outcomes and Experience Research in Children’s Health, Illness and Disability). Faith has been working at GOSH since 1986, she has over 30 years-experience in children’s cancer nursing: that includes periods in clinical practice, education and research. She has been influential in the expansion of the research evidence base for children’s cancer nursing. 

Back in 2018 I wrote an editorial titled: How far do research priority setting exercises influence what research is undertaken: a little, a lot, or not at all? These reflections were shared as we were coming to the end of a James Lind Priority setting exercise, and I have been lucky to lead on two of these (!). It is a question that still bothers me. I will share some of these reflections, use as a stepping stone, to talk about how we might go about answering uncertainties from practice. We must advocate for research that is clinically useful, for research to answer questions and uncertainties that are relevant to our patients, for research to impact on patient experiences, and to improve care. Basic research and applied research are just types of research, they do not have to be viewed in isolation or opposition; working in tandem might indeed provide better outcomes, and greater utility at an earlier stage.

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