Join our study

This research aims to understand the experiences and implications of working in COVID front line teams during the COVID-19 pandemic. From this research we hope to understand the short- and longer-term implications of working in such environments on individual team members’ well-being and their future plans. We have already carried out a large number of in depth interviews of healthcare personnel who worked on COVID wards. However, an important part of this research is an online survey. The survey will help us confirm how widespread the issues and experiences raised in our online interviews were and allow us to identify any issues that may have been missed. We would like to invite you to participate in this survey. 

As one of the many staff members working in a COVID ward during the COVID crisis, we would like to invite you to share your experience during the survey. We are aiming to survey nurses, doctors, allied health professionals, health care assistants and other volunteers from across UK hospitals and NHS Trusts who were working as permanent staff or deployed personnel in wards and areas treating COVID patients. This may be Intensive Care or High Dependency Units, Emergency Department, or other ward treating COVID patients. 

The choice to participate is entirely voluntary, you are free to decline this invitation without giving a reason, by simply closing your browser. If you do decide to take part, please follow the link to our survey. Even if you decide to take part, you are still free to withdraw at any time during the survey and without giving a reason. You can also leave and return to the survey later. 

If you decide to take part by clicking on this link, you will be asked a variety of questions about your experiences on a COVID ward.

 To this end we will ask you some information about you, your job role and your work treating Covid-19 patients. We will also ask you about your bond, teamwork and social support in your team, your personal health and well-being now, and where you see your future career going. If you were deployed, you will also be asked about the nature of your deployment and how you dealt with leaving the ward. The survey will take roughly 15-20min and upon completion you are given the chance to enter our lottery. 

If you wish to take part, please click this link to the survey and consent to the study (first two questions)

For your time investment in the interview and the follow up you will be able to enter a prize draw, where you have the chance of winning one of 60 Amazon vouchers (20x£50, 20x£20, and 20x£15). To participate in the prize draw you’ll need to enter your email address at the end of the survey. Your email address will be stored separately from your survey responses and will only be used for the lottery. 

The prizes will be drawn upon completion of the data collection period in March 2022. Besides this, your participation will have the wider benefit of informing our understanding of how we can best structure teams during crisis situations, and you help us to identify best practices and educational guidance shared with NHS trusts, practitioner colleges, the Florence Nightingale Foundation and the Faculty for Medical Leadership and Management.

The main disadvantage is that you will be spending 15-20min of your time for the study.

The survey may trigger some past memories. Should you become distressed while completing this survey, you can find a list of relevant pathways of support on our website under Help & Advice, providing you with information about support charities specific for Healthcare staff during COVID, NHS internal contacts as well as other health and support avenues. 

Furthermore, you can always follow up with us if you require specific contact information relevant for your particular NHS trust.   

We will need to use information from you for this research project. This information will include demographic data such as your gender, age, occupational care pathway, work experience, length of employment. People will use this information to do the research or to check your records to make sure that the research is being done properly. We will not ask for your name and all demographic data, will be stored anonymously. Your email address which we will ask of you in order to contact you in case you won the lottery will be stored separately from the research data. We will write our reports in a way that no-one can work out that you took part in the study.

You can stop being part of the study at any time, without giving a reason, but we will keep information about you that we already have. We need to manage your records in specific ways for the research to be reliable. This means that we won’t be able to let you see or change the data we hold about you. If you agree to take part in this study, you will have the option to take part in future research using your data saved from this study. 

You can find out more about how we use your information

• On the Health Research Authority NHS website
• our Privacy notice leaflet for NHS staff is available here.
• by asking one of the members of the research team (details below)
• by sending an email to covid19teams@brookes.ac.uk.

All the electronic research materials and data will be anonymously stored on a password protected computer at Oxford Brookes University for 10 years. After this time, the materials will be destroyed in line with the University policy. The findings of this research study will be presented at meetings with employers and in conferences and reported in the professional press and peer-reviewed journals. The findings from this research may be published in scientific journals and used to provide workforce and educational guidance and policy briefings for NHS Trusts, practitioner colleges and chartered institutes. The findings will also be disseminated to academic conferences and seminars. A summary of the overall findings will be available on the project webpage and all research articles generated during the grant will be made freely available on Oxford Brookes’ RADAR (Research Archive and Digital Asset Repository) system: an open, searchable online archive of research papers. If you would like to receive a copy of the summary, please indicate on the consent form or contact COVID19teams@brookes.ac.uk. 

The research is being conducted by a team of researchers from Oxford Brookes University, Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and King’s College London. 

The research is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the “UKRI Ideas to Address Covid-19” funding call. 

The research has been approved by the NHS Health Research Authority (PID 294169) and the University Research Ethics Committee (UREC registration: E20025),and has been adopted by the NIHR (ID: 49262) If you have any concerns about how the study has been conducted, please contact the Chair of the University Research Ethics Committee on ethics@brookes.ac.uk.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with: 

• Principal Investigator: Prof. Vincent Connell
  
• Research Fellow: Dr. Stefan Schilling
• or send an email to: covid19teams@brookes.ac.uk