Same day and urgent care workforce research partnership (SURGE)

Background: Same day and Urgent Care (SURGE) is provided by a diverse range of healthcare staff. SURGE is time-critical, high pressured and unpredictable, making the workforce extremely vulnerable to poor mental and physical health. This impacts on wellbeing, sickness levels, job satisfaction and ultimately performance.

At a systems level, SURGE recruitment and retention are among the worse in the NHS, resulting in challenges to the delivery of timely, safe, equitable, high-quality, efficient and patient-centred care.

Aims and objectives: To provide impactful, rapidly transferable evidence that will support employers to create a more robust and thriving SURGE workforce. Our highly experienced clinical and academic partnership will undertake diverse and inclusive stakeholder consultation, based on principles of equity-centred engagement. We will identify key workforce challenges within the SURGE domains:

• Ambulance services • Primary Care • Emergency Departments and Urgent Treatment Centres • Urgent Community Response Services We will use co-design to identify research questions and deliver projects to address critical issues. Methods: In the first 18 months we will: • Consult with stakeholders

• Map current SURGE service initiatives and interrogate current routinely collected data • Perform rapid literature reviews • Create a detailed workplan for the partnership period • Begin work on the first of seven research projects

Over the course of the partnership, we will conduct (at least) two large scale national evaluations; two extensive reviews/full evaluations; and three scoping projects. One large evaluation will be derived from work already under development within the partnership.

Our team includes experts in: Inclusive engagement and co-design; statistics and health economics; systems thinking and modelling; guideline development; data linkage; clinical informatics; mathematical modelling and computer simulation; evidence synthesis; realist and process evaluation; questionnaire development; clinical trials; qualitative methods; knowledge mobilisation and implementation. We will select the most appropriate methodology for each project on a case-by-case basis.

Timelines for delivery: Comprehensive consultation, and other preparatory activity, will be conducted during the first 18 months and data collection for the first large-scale national evaluation will begin at the start of year 2. Three formal scoping projects to inform onward work will be conducted in years 2-4. A second large scale national evaluation will begin in year 3 and two reviews/full evaluations will be delivered during years 3 and 5.

Throughout the partnership, we will be ready to respond to requests from HSDR for rapid investigation and evaluation and will also seek further funding from other calls as appropriate. The partnership will produce a detailed onward bidding strategy and skilled research staff who will be able to build on SURGE research.

Anticipated impact and dissemination: Guided by implementation theory, we will create a partnership knowledge mobilisation strategy in addition to a logic model for each individual project. Supported by our existing networks, the Partnership Strategic Advisory Panel and through the cross-partnership community of practice we will create tailored, accessible and inclusive outputs, shared through a variety of channels including FutureNHS, NHS Employers, professional bodies and patient and public facing groups.