Tuesday 3 January 2012

A happy, interdisciplinary 2012

January 2012 marks my fifth year with the Relu programme. Moving to Relu from the NHS meant a huge change for me in many respects. But working with the team at Relu has been very enjoyable and entirely positive. There were a couple of aspects of my previous experience that helped. The NHS is made up of people from different disciplines: medics from many different specialties, psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, managers and so on. So interdisciplinarity seemed quite natural to me. The NHS also values stakeholder involvement, and this has been particularly well-established for many years in mental health. So I did feel that I had some insights to offer, having spent more than fifteen years working in communications within mental health trusts in North East England. It has been fascinating seeing how academia has begun to take this ethos of involvement on board. Few, I think, would now deny that the users of research have something to offer the research process itself and engagement makes knowledge transfer much easier. Like so many things in life, it seems pretty obvious once you think about it. Oh, and did I mention that working on the Relu problem has been fun? So having another year to look forward to seems pretty good. Happy new year.

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