Wellcome Trust funded Multimorbidity PhD programme for health professionals in Scotland
Published: 28 April 2023
The Wellcome Trust funded Multimorbidity PhD programme for health professionals, led by Professor Frances Mair and delivered by four Scottish Institutions: The Universities of Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh and St Andrews, aims to create a generation of innovative world-leading researchers empowered with expertise in multimorbidity to prevent the condition and better treat those who are already suffering with it.
The first cohort of students started in November 2022, with the second cohort starting in August 2023. We will have at least five intakes. Full information on the programme and eligibility criteria for applicants can be found here. Projects for the third cohort, starting in 2024, will be advertised in July 2023 on the website.
Here the five health professionals in cohort 1 have summarised their research projects. Look out for publications and engagement coming from these candidates in the future!
-Barbara Nicholl (Deputy Director of the PhD Programme at University of Glasgow)
Heather Walker
My project aims to develop a greater understanding of how multimorbidity and frailty, in patients with chronic kidney disease, influence an individual’s risk of kidney failure, how it is utilised in routine care and how it influences communication with this patient population. The project will involve establishing the validity of the "Kidney Failure Risk Equation" in patients with multimorbidity and/or frailty, exploring what adjustments, if any, are required to improve the performance of the "Kidney Failure risk equation and exploring patient's and healthcare professional's perspective of kidney failure risk, focusing on communication and how it is used in patient care.
Sarah Bowers
We will perform linked data analysis of Scottish deaths to examine how people with multimorbidity in the last year of life utilise routine and unscheduled healthcare and look for any identifiable patterns to this. We will also use serial interviews of high and low users of healthcare to look at which parts of healthcare do and do not bring value to people’s lives.
Rose Penfold
Dr Rose Penfold is based at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh. Her project is using large-scale routine clinical and national audit data to study the associations between multimorbidity, delirium and outcomes in hospitalised patients, aiming to understand how multimorbidity, including disease clusters, affects delirium risk, and how delirium affects outcomes for people with multimorbidity.
Dhaneesha Senaratne
Dhan Senaratne will be investigating the impact of adverse childhood experiences on multimorbidity and chronic pain. This will use two methods; firstly, analysis of existing large population databases; and secondly, through well-established experimental techniques and questionnaires to assess sensation/pain in a small experimental study.
Josie Murray
Josie is currently researching: interprofessional collaborative practice as a healthcare solution to the current health and social care structure and workforce issues posed in responding to the challenge of multimorbidity. She aims to do this through a systematic review of established work followed by a convergent parallel design of mixed methods to address the knowledge gaps, mixing qualitative semi-structured interviews and quantitative data gathered via a survey.
First published: 28 April 2023
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