Researcher Dr Rebecca Palmer wins Verna Wright Prize from The Society for Research in Rehabilitation (SRR)

Congratulations to CATCH researcher Dr Rebecca Palmer who last month was awarded the Verna Wright Prize for best oral presentation 2016 for 'What do People with Aphasia want to be Able to Say?'.

Consent Support Tool published!

We have published the Consent Support Tool, a practical resource designed to help health researchers seek informed consent from people with communication disorders. The tool provides a communication screening test, which researchers can use to identify potential participants’ communication needs. The tool then directs researchers to use specific strategies to support individuals to understand information about research studies and express themselves during the informed consent process. The Consent Support Tool has been used to enable the inclusion of patients with communication disorders in several NIHR-funded research studies since 2009 and its use has been approved by NHS Research Ethics Committees. Over 180 health professional and researchers have received training in how to use the tool.

Click here to find out more: https://www.napierhillpress.co.uk/book-detail?title=consent-support-tool

A paper we published on our evaluation of the Consent Support Tool is available here:  http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/17549507.2013.795999

Written by Mark Jayes and Dr Rebecca Palmer

The Tango of Rehabilitation Research

Three members of the Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology (RATS) group spoke at the summer meeting of the Society for Research in Rehabilitation (SRR) on Monday 5th July 2016. Professor Pam Enderby Emeritus Professor of Community Rehabilitation gave the first Bipin Bhakta Memorial Lecture. Pam compared the science of rehabilitation research to the art of the performing the Tango on Strictly Come Dancing. Discussing the importance of effective team working and national adoption of outcome measures and audits to allow comparison and identification of strengths and weaknesses to improve the quality of rehabilitation services. 

Dr Rebecca Palmer a Senior Clinical Lecturer in the RATS group spoke about what people with aphasia (a language disorder) want to say. Suggesting that whilst personally relevant vocabulary is unique to each individual and likely to contain specific or specialist words for which practice material needs to be individually prepared, there is some commonality in the words selected by people with aphasia which can be used to pre-prepare materials for word finding therapy targeting personally relevant vocabulary. 

Madeleine Harrison a Research Associate in the RATS group presented some of the early findings from her PhD research. The talk focused on defining and measuring the components of a complex neuro-rehabilitation intervention for aphasia. The qualitative research highlighted the active ingredients of the StepByStep approach to computerised aphasia therapy and suggestions for how the intervention fidelity should be measured within a multi-centre trial. 

Posters and prizes at the UK Stroke Forum

Dr Rebecca Palmer with Big CACTUS poster

Three RAT group projects had posters at the UK Stroke forum held in Liverpool from the 1^st-3^rd December 2015. The Big CACTUS study had an on-going trials poster. The Big CACTUS study, led by Rebecca Palmer, is investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of aphasia computer therapy in the long term post-stroke. The study has recruited 180 participants so far and aims to recruit another 105 by July 2016. 

Mark Jayes Patient Carer and Public involvement prize

RAT group member Mark Jayes won the Patient Carer and Public Involvement prize for his poster about about the user-centred design of a toolkit to aid mental capacity assessment. This prize recognised the hard work and vital contribution of service users to the development of the toolkit.

Nasrin Nasr also had a poster about the novel use of narrative stories and forum theatre as methodologies to represent the experience of stroke. 

100 patients in the Big CACTUS study

The Big CACTUS study, funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme and the Tavistock Trust for Aphasia aims to evaluate the use of computer software and volunteer support as an intensive, long term intervention for improving word finding ability in people with aphasia as a result of Stroke. At the end of June the study reached the first 100 patients recruited to the study in 20 speech and language therapy departments across the UK. The patient and public involvement group went out for afternoon tea to celebrate this achievement, and their contribution to the successful progression of the study.

Follow us on twitter @BigCACTUS_study

Written by Dr Rebecca Palmer (Big CACTUS chief investigator)