RCS England Surgical Research

The Research Department of RCS England plays a key role in delivering the College’s strategic aim of improving surgical practice. We achieve this by:

1. Developing and prioritising high-quality research opportunities for our members at all stages of their surgical careers, under the expert direction of the Research Committee; 
2. Delivering an annual programme of research grants to members at all stages of their surgical careers – most notably the prestigious RCS England One Year Surgical Research Fellowship programme, our Pump-Priming Grants programme, as well as other high-profile awards and grants - including support to medical students researching a relevant area of surgical practice through to honorary Professorial and other senior lectureships. 
3. Facilitating a dynamic and diverse network of all those interested and involved in improving practice through RCS England surgical research.

RCS England’s Research department facilitates a thriving ecosystem of cutting edge practice across UK surgical research, working alongside:

• our nine RCS England Surgical Trials Centres;
• seven Chairs of Surgical Trials;
• over twenty Surgical Trials Specialty Leads;
• our expert colleagues running ten national cancer audits and two national registries within the RCS England Clinical Effectiveness Unit (CEU) and National Cancer Audit Collaborating Centre (NATCAN).

Our new robotics and digital programme, Future of Surgery Innovation Hub, and emerging genomics activity now add exciting additional dimensions and broaden the impact of this work.

The wider role and importance of research across healthcare

As we deliver these programmes to catalyse brilliant new surgical research, we seek to help the wider medical research community flourish across health and social care.

In October 2022, we supported and helped the development of the Royal College of Physicians and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)’s position statement Making Research Everybody’s Business. This document made a series of important recommendations for research:

For NHS Trusts, health boards and integrated care systems (ICSs) 

• Develop strong links between medical directors, R&D directors and chief executives.
• Encourage support for research to be recognised as part of direct clinical activity and reward involvement of such through local and national awards.
• Ring-fence time for research in job plans of those who want to have a substantive research leadership role.
• Ensure that multidisciplinary workforce planning encompasses those who support research.
• Take opportunities to implement proportionate training requirements for those involved in research (including taking account of Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Health Research Agency (HRA)’s joint statement on the application of Good Clinical Practice).

For NHS England and equivalent bodies in the other UK nations

• Work with stakeholders to promote opportunities for postgraduate doctors, medical students and other health professionals to engage with research.
• Recognise and reward Trusts that engage with research and industry to improve patient care.

For regulators

• For the Care Quality Commission (CQC): strengthen assessment of clinical research activity as a marker of care within assessment processes for trusts and Integrated Care Systems
• For the General Medical Council (GMC): build on the publication of its key principles – which set out system changes needed to encourage engagement with research – by continuing to work with partners to encourage greater participation.

For funders

• For the NIHR: continue to build capacity and capability for research across the whole of the NHS and care, working closely with other funders, academies and cross-funder initiatives
• Ensure that grant awards and research processes recognise and support research that addresses health inequalities and other NHS priority areas
• Ensure research projects that are funded are accessible and inclusive.
• Provide support to grant-holders to reduce the environmental impact of clinical research activity

RCS England continues to support these recommendations and to advocate for the importance of Making Research Everybody’s Business across health and social care.

Our future focus

As well as advocating for Making Research Everybody’s Business, the College will continue to drive the future of UK surgical research and promote the highest standards of UK research practice. To enable this, we have identified the following key areas of future focus:

Demonstrating impact

We want to see UK surgical research develop from the publication of academic endeavour to the demonstration of impact on patient outcomes.  We will promote the use of implementation science and encourage researchers to show in practice how their work has led to improvements in patient care – whether direct or indirect (for example inclusion into clinical guidelines or new national policy). We will aim to catalyse research that demonstrates this translational impact and makes best use of the novel presentation of results e.g. infographics to develop increased public awareness of the value and importance of surgical research and its ability to improve future patient care.

Supporting the researcher of the future

We want to support the development of future researchers at every stage of their RCS England surgical career.  We will implement a range of approaches to engage the UK’s future surgical researchers in research at all levels through meaningful involvement in both personal and collaborative surgical research projects. We will convene future surgical researchers with the goal of helping to catalyse connection, collaboration, and the creation of new research communities. Communities that will then drive the highest quality future surgical research.

Driving innovation and the safe integration of new techniques and technologies

We will support the development of new techniques and technologies emerging from academia and the UK’s small and medium enterprise (SME) sector through the use of high-quality, real-time research. We will work to streamline the complex process of surgical product or service innovation, from concept through clinical trial, to safe adoption into practice. In doing so we will collaborate with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, as well as RCS England’s own Robotics and Digital Surgery programme and the exciting work of the newly established Future of Surgery Innovation Hub.

Improving the evidence base for surgical sustainability

We will work with key partners in surgery and wider stakeholders across healthcare and technology to support the development of a high-quality evidence base for “greener surgery” and its improved use of the outcomes of this research across the world.  Collaborating with the RCS England’s Sustainability in Surgery group and wider initiatives such as the University of Birmingham’s Net Zero Research Programme.

Facilitating novel trial design

Using the skills and expertise of the members of our Surgical Trials Initiative, we will drive the development of novel trial design within surgery and promote the improved use of new, innovative and highly efficient approaches including adaptive and platform trials. Collaborating with wider expert groups such as the Medical Research Council’s Clinical Trials Unit at University College London and using our network to catalyst early adoption of best practice across all UK surgical trials work.

Maximising the potential of registries

We want to explore the potential of using the power of registries to support the delivery of randomised trials and the possible impact this could have in providing timely and pragmatic answers to important surgical research questions.

Enabling global research reach

We want to see the impact of high-quality research outputs maximised through their translation into health economic analysis, surgical research advocacy and global policy development.  Working with key stakeholders within the NIHR (for example their Global Research Group on Acquired Brain and Spine Injury Research and Global Surgery Research Unit) as well as RCS England and the London School of Economics (LSE)’s own Global Surgical Policy Unit, we want to ensure that the best UK surgical research outputs have the greatest global reach.