Fellowship in the Clinical Neuropathology of Hyperacute Brain Injury inEpping inEpping PUBLISHED 4 DEC 2023

Key Responsibilities

• Work initially alongside our Centre for Excellence team to describe an approach to the role, with key landmarks for delivery of different aspects of the project.
• Attend our Clinico-pathological correlation meetings alongside our team, authoring scholarly descriptions of the process.
• Work alongside our Academic Lead for Head Injury and Data analyst to ensure the appropriateness of data collection relevant to the project.
• Lead the convening of academic meetings themed for Traumatic Brain Injury.
• Work alongside our Patient and Family Liaison Team (PFLT), and Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) groups on all relevant aspects of the project.
• Work with the relevant ethics committees for approvals at all stages.
• Work alongside our operational leadership team on implementation of sample collection standard operating procedures and processes.
• Support our research and scholarship lead by attending related meetings and events.
• Provide evidence of completed work with regular reports and presentations as set out in the strategic project plan.
• Ensure that collaborations and partnerships are built and developed so that the project is successful, creating funding proposals to help support projects.
• Ensure that patient care, and safeguarding of confidential information is always a primary consideration for any activity.
• Deliver appropriate presentations at conferences, symposia and events to a variety of audiences, including subject matter experts.
• Maintain professional registrations as required for the role.
• Demonstrate and be an ambassador for the EHAAT values.
• Contribute to the charitable activities of the organisation where this is relevant to the activity of your role.
• Collaborate with and support the EHAAT Centre for Excellence (C4X) workstreams and educational activities, working alongside the multidisciplinary team to innovate, educate and research.
• Actively monitor and protect the reputation of the organisation as a safe and effective health care provider and contribute to processes that support and ensure our Outstanding status with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

We are delighted to offer this opportunity for an individual with a passion for the study of brain injury to join our team. Our Centre for Excellence places an academic focus on three major clinical domains: Head Injury, Cardiac Arrest, Patient Experience & Outcomes.

We believe that there are major opportunities to improve outcomes for both head injury and cardiac arrest and we intend to be at the forefront of discovery in these areas. The very early phase of patient care takes place at the incident scene with the potential for myriad opportunities for intervention, long before a patient arrives in hospital.

For the brain, our philosophy is that a cascade of reversible and treatable pathological processes starts at the scene, and that it is during this often-forgotten phase of care that opportunities can flourish. Brain injury occurs immediately following head injury and cardiac arrest. Our clinical and academic service exists to improve patient experience and outcomes in this hyperacute phase of the patient journey.

We would like to recruit a highly motivated clinician or scientist with a background in neurosurgery, neuropathology or neuroscience. In this part time role, we anticipate the post-holder working alongside their standard commitments, for example, a clinical or scientific career.

Applications must be made on the EHAAT application form available at ehaat.org/about-us/careers-employment/

This role is focussed on head injury, with an inevitable interface with our work on cardiac arrest, maximising opportunities for discovery across different pathological aetiologies. Traumatic Brain Injury can have an enormous impact on patients and their families, and we are motivated to lessen this burden by innovating for them, and with them.

The fellow will work alongside our team to deliver on a key component of our strategy, to investigate the prehospital phase in a cohort of suspected and proven TBI patients. We will correlate pre-hospital clinical biomarkers with very early clinical findings and interventions, together with the pathology diagnosed on imaging, the clinical trajectory whilst in hospital, outcome data and autopsy data for those who dont reach hospital alive. We also aim to extend the pre-hospital phase by investigating the pre-injury phase using health records to identify further biomarkers that may be associated with good or poor outcome.

The fellow will be responsible for collating and analysing data from a retrospective cohort and creating a prospective study. Each patient will be used as a case study and the entire episode investigated. The project will be supported by appropriate ethics review processes, and the involvement of our Patient and Public Involvement groups. The fellow will develop regression models for identifying correlations between pre-hospital biomarkers and pathological subgroups identified on imaging or by clinical trajectory.