RAT Group Member Mark Jayes NIHR Fellowship

Mark Jayes has been awarded an NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship to carry out research on mental capacity assessment for patients with communication difficulties. Mark works clinically as a Speech and Language Therapist at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals (STH) and until recently was seconded part-time to South Yorkshire CLAHRC Stroke theme, where he worked alongside Dr Rebecca Palmer. Mark plans to use his PhD to develop and evaluate a clinical tool to support hospital multidisciplinary teams to carry out more accurate and inclusive mental capacity assessments for patients with communication difficulties. Mark commented "The Mental Capacity Act 2005 requires health and social care staff to assess whether patients with neurological conditions such as stroke, brain injury and dementia are able to make fully informed decisions about their medical treatment and care. Assessing these patients' decision-making ability is challenging, because their communication difficulties often mean they need individualised support to understand and express information about decisions. I hope to develop an original, clinically useful tool to make this process easier and to ensure that these patients are supported to be more involved in decisions that directly affect them". Mark will be seconded to the RAT group in ScHARR from STH for the duration of his PhD and will be supervised by Dr Rebecca Palmer, Professor Pam Enderby and Dr Michelle Marshall from the Medical School. 

Mark Jayes