In this month's behind the scenes, we caught up with Emma Reid, Research Nurse Specialist and Team Lead at the Royal Devon Commercial Research Centre. Here, Emma shares more about how her team supports cutting-edge health research at the Trust, and how this is helping patients across the NHS. 

You can hear more from Emma about our commercial research centre in the video below:

What does the commercial research team do?

“We specialise in commercial research, which essentially means that we deliver health research studies on the behalf of life science partners, such as pharmaceutical companies, for the benefit of NHS patients.

This also means our patients can often access medication, medical devices, or new treatments that are not yet available via the NHS. This type of research can lead to new innovation, supporting the discovery of new ways to diagnose, treat, and even prevent disease in line with the NHS 10 year plan.

We cover a wide range of specialties, such as oncology, haematology, cardiology, diabetes, and much more. We also specialise in weight loss studies, and vaccine trials, which can be very large scale. We work with other teams across the Trust to deliver health research in other specialties too, including paediatrics. There really is no end to what we can do!”

What does an average day look like?

“On an average day as a research nurse, there is a lot of variety. We cover a lot of clerical tasks and may spend a fair amount of time at a computer, entering important information into databases to support the care of our participants. This includes pre-screening potential volunteers, looking through notes and making sure they are suitable for studies.

We do a lot of clinical work too. At the Commercial Research centre, we have a number of clinical rooms to see volunteers for all kinds of specialist studies. Our Heavitree site has a dedicated space called the Clinical Research unit too, where we can see a number of participants for our large-scale vaccine trials.”

How does the team support patients/ the Trust?

“We make sure every participant has a really good experience taking part in health research with us. We take great pride in making sure each volunteer feels like a VIP, from the moment they express interest in the study, right through their research journey and follow-up visits.

We often see participants returning to take part in more studies, or volunteering to support us with focus groups and feedback sessions.”

What is coming up next?

“At the moment we are delivering an exciting study on C Difficile, which will run for a number of months. Vaccine studies tend to be seasonal, which makes the months surrounding winter crucial for our team.”

What’s been the team’s proudest moment?

"One of our most recent studies was a cutting-edge norovirus study where we over-recruited, making us one of the top performing sites in the UK for participant recruitment!"

Is there anything else you’d like people to know about your team?

“Our team are fantastic at working together at various sites and across various specialties. We are a multidisciplinary team of research nurses, doctors, research practitioners, and admin colleagues who are brilliant at coming together and making research happen.

We also have a wider research delivery team who help us with contracts and other important tasks, and we work closely with clinical teams across the Trust.”

What message would you like to share?

“Thank you very much to everyone who takes part in health research. You really do make a difference to the NHS!

If you are interested in learning more about current studies, remember to visit our website pages "

Pictured above: Emma Reid, Research Nurse Specialist and Team Lead