Dr Maria Drummond - What My First Major NIHR Award Taught Me

Dr Maria Drummond narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.

There is a stage most researchers never write about: the stretch between a positive funding decision and actually getting started. This blog is about exactly that. It follows the news of a first major NIHR award arriving on a Friday afternoon at a farm park, the relief and disbelief of the moment, and then the confusion when the award turns out to be conditional. Over the following five months come rounds of committee feedback, clarifications and revisions, along with a quiet fear that asking too many questions will look like weakness. The turning point is a passing comment from another Principal Investigator about the long wait after their own positive outcome, which leads to the reassurance that conditional awards and iterative feedback are entirely normal. It ends by asking why funding success is so often presented as a clean, decisive win when the reality is iterative, negotiated and full of near misses. You can read it or listen to the audio narration.

https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-what-my-first-major-nihr-award-taught-me/

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Dr Maria Drummond is Team Leader at ENRICH Scotland, based at the University of Glasgow. A registered nurse and district nurse by background, Maria spent ten years working in the Glasgow City District Nursing service before moving into research in 2021. She also has five years of experience working in older adult care homes, including with people living with dementia. Her research focuses on care homes and is motivated by the priorities of staff, residents and people with lived experience. Funded through the NIHR Research Programme for Social Care, Maria is passionate about improving access to research involvement, evidence based practice and better outcomes for people living and working in care home settings.

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