What is INSPIRE?
UG Research at the Liverpool School of Medicine
The INSPIRE programme here at Liverpool has been running for a few months now, and we wanted to share a little more about it.
INSPIRE is a programme run by the Academy of Medical Science and is designed to:
- Engage medical undergraduates with research;
- Strengthen local, regional and national student research networks, sharing experiences and resources;
- Foster a research culture in all clinicians entering the NHS, not just those with an interest in pursuing a career in academic medicine.
The Academy of Medical Sciences runs a competitive grant process to help develop these ideas within Medical Schools.
Research-led education is integral to the School of Medicine, with research concepts embedded in core components of the MBChB course. Building on this we applied for an INSPIRE grant and, happily, we were successful.
We want to develop the research concept here at Liverpool, drawing together a number of existing activities, creating a supportive research enhanced undergraduate environment and providing new opportunities to experience and understand research. The School’s proposal to INSPIRE was written in collaboration with two great student societies: the Liverpool Research Society (LivResSoc) and AcaMedics.
What does Undergraduate Medical research look like?
At Liverpool, undergraduate research occurs in a number of ways including the Schools Research and Scholarship programme, student research society coordinated research projects and students developing their own research projects.
We want to support student activities, getting research out to a wider audience, developing skills and discussion. We appointed INSPIRE School of Medicine Students Research Advocates to help drive this.
The three strands the Liverpool INSPIRE programme is based on are:
- Support for the student research societies
- Celebrating and inspiring student research
- Support for Intercalating students and introduction to Integrated Clinical Academic Training (ICAT).
We want to take MBChB students’ research activities and develop them into formats that can be broadcast at conferences and via publications. The Research Advocates are running sessions to develop research skills and information dissemination; they have been working with the research societies to put on a very successful student research conference LivResCon4. It was a great event, with students attending from around the region.
How can I get involved in INSPIRE?
For those students who want to explore research and other activities further we also have the School’s intercalation programme and INSPIRE aims to support this by providing a repository of student experiences, and a network of students who have intercalated.
Support for and celebration of student research activities will continue. Any questions? Please get in touch: inspire@liverpool.ac.uk