The Hospice Research Hub aims to help you understand where your hospice is now, where you want to be and how to take the next steps in becoming research active.
The Hospice Research Hub is here to help you:
- Understand: explore what research active means for your hospice and why research matters.
- Reflect: consider where your hospice is now, including existing research experience, capacity and support, and identify any gaps or opportunities.
- Plan: Think about where you want to be and the support you need to get there.
Why is research important?
Research can help us answer important questions, generate evidence and inform decisions about care. This is particularly important because hospices are already generating valuable knowledge through their everyday work with patients, families and communities. Research provides a way to turn these important questions and experiences into evidence that can help hospices improve care, understand patient and family experiences, and ultimately reduce inequalities in healthcare outcomes. For example, research can support:
- Evaluation of innovations
- Development of staff, such as research skills, career opportunities and confidence.
- Strengthening of services to generate new evidence and information for service development.
- Partnerships and funding opportunities, like connecting with universities, research networks and organisations like the NHS.
- Contribution to the wider evidence base for palliative and end-of-life care, ultimately influencing practice.
Understanding what research means
Research involves finding new information or developing a better understanding of an important question through evidence. Within a hospice, research could explore:
- How do patients and families experience our services?
- Are some groups facing barriers to accessing care?
- How could we improve the care we provide?
- Does a new service or intervention make a difference?
- What does existing research tell us about an issue that matters to our hospice?
Developing your research skills
You do not need to be an experienced researcher to develop your skills. Depending on your interests and needs, training could include:
- Introduction to research methods, including qualitative and quantitative research and evidence reviews
- Data collection and analysis
- Research ethics and governance
- Patient and public involvement
- Service evaluation, implementation and knowledge mobilisation
There may also be opportunities for postgraduate study, including MRes and MSc programmes, PhD opportunities and NIHR fellowships. Your research journey could begin by learning about research, joining an existing project, undertaking training, developing a research question or working with a research partner. You could then lead or contribute to research as your experience develops. There is no set order to these steps. The right starting point will depend on your hospice’s priorities, staff and existing experience.
