Dr Jenni Burton, trainee geriatrician and NES/CSO Postdoctoral Clinical Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, received the 2024 Rising Star award as part of our inaugural Dunhill Medical Trust Academy Excellence Awards. Here we dive into why she believes research has to be done hand-in-hand with care home residents and staff, rather than just for them.
Involving older people and the health and social care staff who support them in planning and delivering research is key to ensuring impactful results. But, as any researcher can tell you, there’s no quick and easy way to do this.
For Dr Jenni Burton, this challenge is no excuse for viewing public, patient and stakeholder involvement merely as a nice-to-have, rather than an essential component of every project. “Money needs to be spent on ensuring that we have included the right people, the right voices, at the centre of the research,” she argues.
At The Dunhill Medical Trust, we prioritise funding projects that undertake meaningful patient and public involvement and engagement, as well as working in partnership with care staff.
“The Trust’s values certainly resonate,” Jenni says, “They really support the idea that powerful research will be designed if you incorporate involvement principles from the outset.”
Research into care homes is desperately needed
Jenni’s research looks into pathways into care homes, comparing those who move from the community with those who transition directly from hospital. She has been driven to better understand the needs of people living in care homes since starting her PhD in 2015, when she noticed that older people and their families were struggling with decisions around how to make the move into a care home from hospital.
“Despite this being a really common life-changing experience, there is very little research about how to support people making the move from hospital to care home. Even worse, we had policy documents that said it shouldn’t happen, but without there being evidence for why not.”
Using routinely collected health and care data, Jenni quickly realised that public and patient involvement and engagement was needed to better understand and address the problems that care home staff, residents and families were facing.
“We discovered that older people living in care homes were in some ways invisible in routine datasets. And that was a surprise given how important a population they are, how much they are talked about, and how complex their needs are.”
This pressing need is only growing in the wake of COVID-19. “Once we were allowed back into care homes to speak to people directly, they were telling us how unsupported they felt leaving hospital,” Jenni explains.
Care home and social care staff to lead research
Jenni will be using her award funds to enable care home residents and staff to contribute to research projects that will make a difference where it matters most.
“I want to understand what we can do to empower them to have those opportunities, brokering conversations with researchers about the work that they want to be done, so it’s not always researchers approaching care homes with ideas.”
To support this, it’s important that staff should have the opportunities to learn what’s happening in the research landscape and input their experience and expertise into these spaces where they’ve seldom been able to get into before. Some of the funds will be used to enable care home staff to take formal training to develop their practice and experience in research methods. Jenni will also fund social care nurses and other practitioners to attend research events and conferences.
“People’s time is valuable,” says Jenni. “Rather than thinking about involvement as an add-on activity, the Dunhill Medical Trust is valuing all the preparatory time that is needed to build a mutual relationship.”
Finally, Jenni is also using the award money to do more engagement herself by hosting a stand at a care home conference. “I’m looking forward to talking to people about what I have planned, and getting unfiltered feedback from the care home community,“ she explains.
“In the future, we should be ensuring that people working in care homes and across social care have opportunities to get involved in research. I want to see them supported to be the planners and designers of future research.”
How we can best support and develop our early career researchers
For Jenni, there were two essential ingredients that contributed to her career development. The first is an extremely friendly, warm and collaborative UK academic geriatric medicine community.
“I’ve been supported by people who work across the country. Very senior people have lent me their time, support and expertise, making sure that I had opportunities that were far greater than those I might have been able to leverage by myself.”
The second is having a long standing academic supervisor who has supported her every step of the way.
“I’m so grateful to my supervisor, Professor Terry Quinn,” says Jenni. “Not only has he demonstrated how to run a collaborative academic department, he encouraged me to align my research with the things that really drive me, even though care home research can often be considered difficult to do.”
Do you know a rising star in ageing-related research?
The DMT awarded Jenni our inaugural Rising Star award because she exemplifies why and how we should be involving patients, and health and care staff in research from the outset.
Nominations for our 2025 Excellence Awards are open until 4th November. Members of the DMT Academy can self-nominate or nominate another member, explaining how they have demonstrated research excellence and a genuine commitment to our key principles for research.
You can also read our spotlight on Professor Ilaria Bellantuono, our 2024 Senior Leader Award winner and her modern approach to leadership in academia.