ARC OxTV internships: A clinical physiotherapists experiences

Finding time to undertake research is difficult when working in a clinical role.

We often have great ideas and insight into what is important for patients and front-line clinicians but lack the time and head space needed to even begin to develop these much-needed ideas.

I’m a physiotherapist working in rare disease and interested in enabling my patients to be more physically active. My yearlong internship with ARC Oxford afforded me the time, and funding, to pursue one such idea to improve patient care.

I’d spotted the ARC internship  advertised in our hospital newsletter, so I decided to apply and was thankfully successful. The application process was straightforward, and the interview was not at all daunting and the interview panel were friendly and supportive.

In your application you can include how you would like to use the funding and make it bespoke for your experience and research needs. In my application I was able to include payment for my time and my academic supervisors, as well as funding for further academic training and to support patient involvement in my project.

The internship ended up funding a day of my time each week for a year, allowing me to codesign an exercise intervention with patients and specialist physiotherapists. It also allowed me to access training on Patient and Public involvement (PPI), which is essential for all research.  This turned out to be invaluable for my project as the patient feedback changed my initial research idea and helped to develop the final research question.

Working with supervisors from within a Clinical Trial Unit (CTU) – and across the wider ARC team – allowed me to access a wealth of knowledge; it allowed me to meet with health economists, statisticians, and other specialists in methodologies that helped guide me though my journey and project design.

I was also able to include a Master’s module on ‘Mixed methodology’ within my funding, which I used to explore my research design following on from the internship. This was a great opportunity to both learn more and meet other researchers in this field and make contacts for the future.

Being a part of the University of Oxford also gave me access to a vast array of training opportunities designed to help people on their research journey, so if you also find yourself successful for such an internship, do take the time to investigate what is available. Another bonus from being a part of the University was being able to access the amazing journal articles collection – these saved hours of time, as we all know how difficult it can be to gain access to certain research articles!

I have now written up my years’ experience as an ARC OxTV intern for publication and even been chosen for an oral presentation in a European conference, which will be a great opportunity to share what I have learnt and developed with my colleagues.

The ARC OxTV internship has been a fabulous opportunity to meet and work with a variety of researchers, do some relevant training, and develop new contacts. But more importantly, it gave me the time and resources to develop the ideas and insights I had from my clinical role; to design an exercise intervention programme that can now be used for our patient group to increase their physical activity.

Stephanie Taylor MCSP, MRes,

Stephanie Taylor is a specialist physiotherapy and has worked at the Oxford Haemophilia and Thrombosis centre for the last 14 years. She specialises in musculoskeletal health working with patients with haemophilia and other bedding disorders.