Clinical Research Toolkit for Urologists

We are very pleased to present to you the next article (p. 201) in a series that will make up a ‘Clinical Research Toolkit’ primarily designed for urologists based in the UK who want to establish a practical interest in clinical research. Taken together, these concise articles are intended to offer practical advice for urologists, junior and senior alike, to take part in clinical research, although they may be also be informative to clinical and basic science researchers in other disciplines. We hope these articles will help to equip clinicians with the skills to participate in effective clinical research such that it becomes a routine part of our NHS practice. Involvement in research can vary from introducing the idea of trial participation to patients under our care and identifying them to local research teams, to working in laboratory research, to acting as a chief investigator for a regional or national clinical trial.

This series has been commissioned jointly by the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) Section of Academic Urology and the Royal College of Surgeons of England Clinical Trials Initiative, which is intended to support new studies across all surgical specialties including urology. Professor Rob Pickard (benign disease) and Professor Mark Emberton (urological oncology) were appointed as the first national surgical specialty leads for urology with the specific remit to develop new and innovative trials, and establish clinical networks.

We hope you find these articles useful and interesting. Please get in touch if you have any feedback, would like further information on any of the subjects covered, or would like to participate by writing on other relevant topics.

We are grateful to the Executive Committee of the Section of Academic Urology for providing thorough and detailed peer review and to Ian Pearce and his Editorial Team at JCU for publishing the series.

Articles in this series will cover the following topics:

Regulatory aspects of research in the UK

Research funding streams in the UK

Planning research and contributing to research planned by others

Undertaking clinical and non-clinical research

Reporting research findings and outcomes