Collaborative research in cardiac rehabilitation

Posted by jchoules

10 May 2016

Collaborative research in cardiac rehabilitation across the Tamar in Cornwall has been on-going for over a decade starting with Denis Pereira Gray, John Campbell and Phil Evans supervising Hayes Dalal’s MD and conducting the Cornwall Heart Attack Management Study (CHARMS) in the early 2000s (Dalal et al., 2007).
More recently and following identification from our Cochrane review of the evidence gap for an evidence-based home intervention in heart failure, we obtained an NIHR Programme Grant in 2012 – Rehabilitation Enablement in Chronic Heart Failure (REACH-HF) – a £2 million 5-year grant. Having developed a bespoke nurse facilitated self-management and rehabilitation programme (‘The HF Manual’) for heart failure patients and their carergivers led by Colin Greaves, we are now in the formal evaluative phase with two ongoing randomised controlled trials.

In May 2015, Rod Taylor was appointed as NIHR Senior Investigator and following discussions with the Research Development & Innovation Department, at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, he has secured an honorary contract with RCHT for the next 4 years. From April 2016 Rod has committed research capacity funding from his Senior Investigator award to further develop research in heart failure rehabilitation in Cornwall and to continue to support our ongoing programme of Cochrane reviews in cardiac rehabilitation based in Exeter.

REACH-HF Manuals, CD and DVD

Research capacity funding will enable Jenny Wingham to develop her research in the involvement of caregivers in health care interventions as they support people with long term conditions such as heart failure and facilitate two UEMS PhD studentships. The plan is that these doctoral students will be based in Truro and work on the large volume of data generated from our REACH HF study. We hope these studentships will be advertised this summer to begin in the 2016-17 academic year.

Exciting times ahead for cardiac rehab in the Peninsula!

Jenny Wingham, Rod Taylor & Hayes Dalal

May 2016