Trust cleans up at Greater Manchester Clinical Research Awards

Debbie Vinsun, chief operating officer, NIHR Clinical Research Network Greater Manchester; Dr Andrew Ustianowski, infectious diseases consultant at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust; Simon Denegri, national director for public participation and engagement in research at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)

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The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has won big at the Greater Manchester Clinical Research Awards 2015 claiming two first places and two runner up awards.

Dr Andrew Ustianowski, infectious diseases consultant at the Trust won Investigator of the Year, and the Research Team at Fairfield General Hospital won Research Team of the Year at the awards.

Dr Zoe Borrill, consultant in respiratory medicine was runner in up in the Investigator of the Year category and Joanne Shaw, diabetes research nurse, and Gina North clinical trials administrator, were runners up for the Best Research Debut award.

The Greater Manchester Academic Health Science Network sponsored event held in Manchester city centre, saw research staff and teams from the region awarded for their efforts across 15 categories.

Steve Woby, director of research & development at the Trust said: “This is prestigious event attended by leading academics, industry partners and representatives from the NIHR CRN. It was a great evening and as a Trust we did extremely well. We were overall winner in two categories and runner up in two others. This is a fantastic achievement and highlights our continued commitment to supporting high quality research at the Trust.”

Dr Andrew Ustianowski has supported clinical trials at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust for approximately 10 years now. He has been an instrumental figure in providing research leadership within infectious disease research. Over the past five years he has supported over 60 NIHR CRN studies, with 39 of these being industry sponsored studies.

He fully appreciates the importance of effectively initiating and delivering NIHR CRN studies and develops recruitment strategies for all of the trials in which he is involved. This commitment and attention to deal resulted in his team recruiting to time and target on every single one of their trials last year. In addition to his role at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, Dr Ustianowski is also the NIHR CRN GM speciality lead for infectious diseases.

The Research Team at Fairfield General Hospital’s nomination highlighted the team’s ability to work flexibly at three different hospitals. The team was also praised for the number of disease specialities it covers, including respiratory medicine, surgery, the emergency department, gastroenterology, ICU, and rheumatology.

The team has successfully increased commercial studies by over 100 percent and has become a ‘first choice’ destination to place research in the fields of respiratory medicine and inflammatory bowel disease.

The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust manages The Royal Oldham Hospital, North Manchester General Hospital, Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, Rochdale Infirmary and community services.