Research Design Service South West

Success stories

Dr Fergus Caskey
Medical Director - UK Renal Registry (UKRR)
Southmead Hospital, Bristol

The UKRR, based at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, collects, analyses and reports on data from 71 adult and 13 paediatric renal centres. Participation is mandated in England through the NHS National Service Specification for patients requiring renal replacement therapy - dialysis and kidney transplantation. The Chief Executive of each Trust is responsible for adherence to this contract. The UKRR aims to use routine healthcare data and a broad range of research methods to improve outcomes for people with kidney disease through translational public health research. This is reflected in its strategy “to establish a process for rapid analysis & write-up, obtain funding for Renal Registry trials, and obtain funding for clinical/health economics/qualitative doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships”.

To this end Dr Fergus Caskey, the UKRR’s Medical Director, approached the RDS in 2015. In the past 2 years support has been provided by the RDS for the UKRR, including five studies to date (two funded NIHR HTA trials, one funded and one shortlisted NIHR Fellowship and one unfunded NIHR Global Health Research Group application):

Prepare Older Multi-morbid People for End-stage Renal Disease Study (Prepare-ME).
Funder: HTA, £2,538,968

High flux haemodialysis vs high dose haemodiafiltration registry trial (H4RT).
Funder: HTA, £1,738,553

Children who ‘crash-land’ onto dialysis: why do children with established renal failure present late to tertiary nephrology services? A quantitative-qualitative mixed-methods observational study.
Funder: NIHR Doctoral Fellowship, £33,1496

How are illness and treatment beliefs linked to health outcomes among individuals with advanced chronic kidney disease?
Funder: NIHR Fellowship – shortlisted for interview in June 2017

Including broader patient benefits of end stage renal disease interventions in cost-effectiveness analysis.
Funder: Kidney Research UK or NIHR Postdoc Fellowship; ongoing

Dr Caskey says: “I have been delighted with the support I have received from the South West RDS team. They have been flexible and responsive in terms of reviewing and feeding back at several stages on drafts of my major grant applications. Although I have already had a strong team of methodological co-investigators and collaborators, it has been extremely useful to have the fresh and friendly-critical perspective of the experienced RDS methodologists, seeing things for the first time as the funding panel will be. I do think that their questions and comments played a key role in my being able to prepare grant and fellowship applications that achieved a very high funding success rate over the last couple of years.”

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