An opportunity for staff to develop their research skills – or support others to do so – is being offered to Walsall Healthcare colleagues.

The Research for All study is now live and promotes the use of Hexitime. Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust partnered with Hexitime in 2018 to deliver the first time bank in the NHS for improving services.

The  initiative now has participants from most NHS providers in the country and has created a free to use digital platform for sharing and developing great ideas, and exchanging expertise. This allows anybody improving services (including patients) to access resources across the system, for free, that they wouldn’t otherwise have had access to.

Dr Hesham Abdalla, former Walsall paediatrician and co-founder of Hexitime, said: “We’re so excited that research for All is live and urge potential participants to find out more.

“We know that our Black and Asian Minority Ethnic colleagues in particular feel that there is a lack of research expertise and training and this is borne out in the fact that most senior posts in research are occupied disproportionally by white male medics.

We want this to change and want to empower staff to drive that change. This study will explore if time banking helps healthcare professionals reach their research goals and increase their cultural competency. Our BAME Shared Decision Making Council is hugely supportive of this approach and its members want to encourage colleagues to sign up.”

Staff can offer their research expertise on Hexitime or respond to others’ requests of research support. By doing so, they earn time banking credits that they can use to “buy” expertise or experience for themselves or other members of their team

Take part in the Research For All Study by clicking on this link https://hexitime.com/research-for-all

Walsall Healthcare would like to sign up at least 60 members of staff.