RAFT is the umbrella organisation coordinating the work of the nineteen regional networks (for more information, see http://www.raftrainees.com/). Two RAFT national meetings are held each year, the Winter meeting in January and the project development meeting (PDM) during GAT in the summer.
The purpose of the meeting is to allow each of the regional groups the opportunity to present a project or an idea which could be developed into RAFTs next national project, involving as many of the regional groups as are able to contribute data. It’s also a great opportunity for those who have run projects locally to get feedback from expert peer reviewers on how to improve or re-structure work. The project selected at the 2015 PDM was IHypE, which is set to run later in the year.
Projects were submitted nationally which then underwent a peer-review process to produce a shortlist of five for presentation. Reviewers on the day included Dr Andrew Klein and Professor Gary Mills. A vote was taken at the meeting following the presentations to decide the winners.
Two projects were selected at the 2016 pdm. The first is ALPINE, a project on protective lung ventilation during emergency laparotomy and linked to the NELA data collection system. This project is being developed by PLAN, the Pan-London research and Audit Network. The second project selected is being developed by AARMY, making it the first RAFT project to originate in Yorkshire! The project is looking at the prevalence of penicillin-allergy label amongst the elective surgical population and is topical in view of NAP-6.
More information about both of these projects including how you can get involved will appear on AARMY’s website soon.
