Grant supports carer study

Professor Scott Murray, St Columba’s Hospice Chair of Primary Palliative Care, has received a six-figure grant for a feasibility study that may ultimately enhance support provided to informal carers of patients who are approaching the end of their life.

The grant comes from the Dimbleby Marie Curie Cancer Care Research Fund.

Enhancing patient care

Professor Murray’s two-year project proposes and tests a primary-care based intervention that will identify informal carers who may not be aware that the person they are looking after is approaching death or may not regard themselves as carers.

It is hoped that this intervention will increase the number of carers identified, enhance the support they are offered and therefore improve the quality of care provided to the patient.

This model will be piloted and evaluated in four general practices, but if the study is successful it will hopefully lead to a UK-wide multi-centred trial.

Strong quarter

This grant was one of 24 awards made to the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine during October.

The college has experienced a strong first quarter for the 2012/13 academic year, bolstered in part by the £59.7 million infrastructure award to the MRC Human Genetics Unit (HGU).

On the whole, during the first quarter, all three colleges have generated award values in excess of the same period last year. Even without taking into consideration the HGU award, the University’s research awards total remains around £20 million ahead of what was recorded during the previous year’s first quarter.

For a full report on the University’s research applications and awards performance during the first quarter of 2012/2013, visit Edinburgh Research and Innovation’s KPI reports online.