Welcome to the Irish Surgical Research Collaborative Website

Firstly I would like to welcome you all to the ISRC website. We aim to create a monthly blog here to keep you all updated on interesting, useful and topical areas of surgical research.

Before we start however I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit of background about the ISRC.

The ISRC was founded in 2015, the Irish Surgical Research Collaborative (ISRC) is an All-Ireland surgical trainee led research collaborative supported by RCSI. Fundamentally the ISRC exists to promote, support and encourage surgical trainee-led collaborative research for the benefit of patients across all surgical specialties in Ireland and Internationally. We aim to:

• Widen access to research opportunities for all surgical trainees across the island of Ireland
• Deliver high quality collaborative research with real patient benefit
• Provide mentorship and infrastructural support to surgical trainees interested in designing and delivering clinical trials

General membership of the ISRC is open to all medical students and surgical trainees (registration link available at end of post ). Currently our committee comprises 16 members, all surgical trainees working in different specialities. Committee positions are advertised annually, usually in January or February and if this is something you may be interested in I advise you to go for it!

Our collaborative projects are at the heart of the collaborative. We usually select our projects through a competitive Dragon’s Den process which is kindly supported by RCSI and Consultant Surgeons from all over the country. Our current projects included the following:

• RETAINER I: an international cohort study reporting post-operative urinary retention rates following elective inguinal hernia (recruitment closed, data analysis phase)
• RETAINER II: development of an inguinal hernia specific patient reported outcome measure (recruitment parallel to RETAINER I, literature review phase)
• OAT: a prospective, randomised control trial of peri-operative thromboprophylaxis in patients undergoing bariatric surgery (ethical approval phase)
• National QI study exploring the perioperative management if obesity (planning phase)

We aim to deliver regular educational events in the area of surgical research including an annual Surgical Research Skills Training Day. We are also doing some work with RCSI on research methodology needs for surgical trainees and how we can support surgical trainees interested in performing research at all stages of their training and career.

We hope you find this website useful as it grows with content. If you would like to get in contact with us please do so, we would love to hear about any useful research resources or any new and exciting research ideas you may like to share.

Christina Fleming Chair, ISRC