Sarah Lloyd, a Specialist Physiotherapist, and Barry Clift, an Occupational Therapist, have both been selected for internships by ARC NWC. The ARC internships are designed to support aspiring researchers to carry out their own small research projects to address health inequalities.

Sarah and Barry will receive training and supervision from experienced researchers from the ARC’s partner universities. They will dedicate up to one day a week to their research project for up to one year.

Sarah is joint physiotherapy lead in the Trust’s Community Neurosciences team in Warrington where she has worked for over 10 years. Her internship research project will look at the compliance of neurological patients in using the splints recommended to help the self-management of their conditions. Sarah will investigate if these patients achieved their goals with splinting and self-management of their condition and identify the barriers to compliance.

Barry is an occupational therapist who has worked with Drive Ability North West, the NHS’ driving assessment service, for 20 years. He is interested in the journey of a person from the point of diagnosis with dementia to stopping driving and subsequent strategies for maintaining community mobility and social involvement. His internship research project will explore the effectiveness of an early support programme for people with a recent diagnosis of dementia to manage the process of continued driving and stopping driving.

Dr Rachel Hall, Head of Research at Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Our Trust is committed to providing evidence-based quality care through research, locally delivered by expert staff. We have recently refreshed our research strategy and a key priority is increasing the research workforce. These internships provide us with an important start to achieving this so that we have talented investigators delivering research in the community setting. Sarah and Barry are ideally suited to the scheme; curious and committed to using research to improve the care that they provide.”