My experience (so far) of a clinical-academic research role

Thank you to Millie Heelan (@heelan_phd) for producing the latest ResNetSLT blog post.

In October 2016 I took up an opportunity of a clinical doctoral research fellowship.

This involves four years of funding to work two days a week as part of an adult acute SLT team and three days a week conducting a PhD study.

Further information on conducting a clinical doctoral research fellowship can be found here.

This opportunity has been a great learning curve to date, embracing the academic world, research methods and meeting an inspiring range of people interested in changing future practice for our patients.

One thing that is very important when conducting a PhD, as well as in clinical practice, is keeping up to date and knowledgeable about research happening in your area. Here are a few ideas to remain current within your field:
  1. Get in touch with your trust library service. They are experts in creating the right search terms. They will help to successfully find publications to help answer your clinical/research questions. Most also run courses on critical appraisal too.
  2. Sign up to database alerts such as google scholar. You can allow relevant publications to be sent straight to your inbox based on the search terms you choose.
  3. Use Twitter and find key people to follow in your field. They will post links to research papers and links to others who are working on similar topics. Sometimes you find out about projects before anything has been published.
Follow @ClinAcSLT and @ResNetSLT for updates from fellow SLTs. Are there any other ways of keeping up to date with literature that you use?

Please comment below or Tweet us at @ResNetSLT.

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