As is tradition at this time of year, we would like to say thanks for everyone who has helped us this year and to share with everyone a summary of what we have been up to in 2024.
The website has continued to grow steadily and has become the central space for our project. We’ve had over 700 visitors to the website, from all around the world!
(n.b. it says ‘views’ but this is ‘visitors’, in terms of views we had about 1.2k in the year total)
We think this shows just how much we are growing as a project, and makes us excited knowing that others are interested to learn more!
Research we started…
This year we got started with plenty of work to help us do our research.
1x Literature review protocol (aka your plan of what literature you are going to look for)
1x Literature review (looking at the literature and writing about it)
1x NHS Research Protocol (plan of what we will do with NHS families and staff)
1x NHS ethics application (getting permission to go into the NHS to meet families and do the research)
1x Parent Advisory Group started meeting every 6 months
Research we finished…
So far this year we were able to publish two manuscripts:
1x case report of harm caused by medicines
1x literature review protocol (accepted to be published, awaiting publication, we’ll add the link when it goes live live on the internet)
Public engagement work
Public Engagement work:
2x public advisory group meetings
1x engagement event (World Prematurity Day)
2x High School careers fairs
Many x volunteering for MWCC Saturday Suppers
We have met many parents on a one to one basis to help us with the project and are very grateful their support. This is just some of the work parents/public advisors have contributed to the project:
- discussing what ‘resilience’ means and how we can use the term in our research
- checking our literature review results make sense
- helping to write the information sheets to help parents decide if they want to be in our research
- choosing when and how to speak to families about joining the research study
- choosing which questions we will ask in our research during interviews
- practicing the interview questions, a.k.a. ‘mock interviews’
- checking our publications make sense
And also, me (Stephen) considers all families as mentors who are helping me on this journey and I am so grateful for all the time and energy that has been given to me. Thank you.
Presenting our work
2x poster presentations at conferences and meetings (this is where you produce a poster and display it)
2x oral presentations at conferences and meetings (this is where we wrote a presentation and talk to a group of people)
1x education sessions with professionals (this is where we have talked about our research and what we are learning)
1x blog post for Leeds Hospitals library
For one of the presentations we won a prize for best presentation by a 2nd year PhD student!
Online Links
We are growing our online presence alongside this website. In 2024, we added:
1x bluesky account and profile
1x CHORAL website profile page
In 2025 we plan to add Instagram and TikTok accounts, as well as increasing the amount of videos we make.
Final thoughts…
We feel proud to look back on 2024 and see what we’ve achieved together, but we know this is still just the beginning.
In 2025 we want to do much more of what we have been doing. So that means meeting more families, speaking to more staff and listening to more stories. All of this so we can share more learning, think of new ideas and get the change that we need for families to make their lives better.
We are excited to get started with 2025 and we wish everyone a happy and healthy 2025.
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