Anna Lloyd, Clinical Lead Physiotherapist at the Royal Devon Mardon Neurorehabilitation Centre, has been featured in a regional journal for her work exploring how exercise groups can better support for patients in stroke and neurorehabilitation services.

Completed as part of the Chief Nurse Research Fellowship, Anna’s project has also gained wider recognition, with a poster presentation at a recent international conference in London.

Anna's project focused on how well the current groups help patients progress towards their rehabilitation goals, staff experiences, and where things could be improved in response to recent national guidance.

Anna’s findings, recently featured in the South West Clinical Schools Journal, also highlighted the impact of a positive research culture.

Encouraged by her experience of the Chief Nurse Research Fellowship programme, Anna hopes to build more research into her day‑to‑day practice.

Anna said:

"Exercise is vital for recovery, and group work helps build confidence and autonomy as people prepare to return to the community. Having accessible in-patient exercise groups can make that transition easier and support people to take greater ownership of their rehabilitation.

It feels really positive to have this work published, it has given our team more confidence to talk about research in everyday practice. It’s also been inspiring to see the groups running more effectively and to share that learning more widely.

I expected to identify issues I already suspected and then start a structured improvement project. What surprised me was that simply opening up the conversation with staff led to improvements. Positive changes began happening naturally, just by giving people the space to reflect and talk. 

I feel this reinforced the message that an active research culture isn’t just about running big studies, it’s about thinking critically. That mindset alone improved outcomes before any formal changes were introduced.

Anna said:

"The project highlighted helpful findings we could immediately address in practice, but also identified new questions, especially around how group‑based rehabilitation and semi-supervised practice is defined and delivered within stroke and neurorehabilitation more widely.

This approach can increase the dosage and intensity of therapy, which is what the evidence recommends, but we need to ensure the interventions are effective and sufficiently personalised too. With time and funding, I hope to build on this."

You can read Anna’s full publication here.

Learn more about the Chief Nurse Research Fellowship here