This internship will assist a multi-disciplinary team to conduct a narrative literature review linked to parents access to information and the balancing of complex decision-making in relation to treatment for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The intern will be fully supported to gain skills in searching the literature and writing up the review findings.

This internship will focus on supporting a multi-disciplinary team to analyse a dataset comprising of open text responses from an online qualitative survey exploring challenges in accessing health care for neurodivergent and/or disabled children and young people within the North West. The intern will be fully supported in learning coding skills and working alongside researchers to analyse the dataset.

Projects related to an evaluation of a children’s palliative care programme and an evidence review of support interventions for childhood cancer.

Supervised by Dr Kate Knighting, Reader in Palliative Care and Supportive Care.

Projects linked to various conditions and clinical priorities including anxiety, depression, dementia and suicide prevention. Internships in the People’s Place as part of Everton in the Community and its GP Teams and in community-based programmes e.g., Tackling the Blues, a multi-award-winning programme for children and young people. Supervised by Andy Smith, Professor of Sport, Physical Activity and Mental Health.

Projects may include prediction tools; visualisation and augmented reality approaches to medical education and training; access to augmented reality to visualise and interact with objects, components and scenarios relevant to medical education and training; access to smart technology (e.g., wearables and other tracking systems) and software approaches to optimise digital health. Supervised by Marcello Trovati, Professor of Computer Science and Ella Pereira, Professor of Computing.

Work related to Treatment pathways for people with Osteoarthritis of the Shoulder: A survey of UK NHS publicly facing information.  There are 3 areas to choose from as individual 4 week projects:

• Diagnosis
• Terminology/ explanation,
• Treatment pathways

A rapid literature review of a current topic of interest in the use of technology or simulation in undergraduate medical education to inform their use by students and educators.

Supervised by Professor Adam Watts, Consultant Elbow Surgeon (Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching NHS Foundation Trust) and Chris Littlewood, Professor of Musculoskeletal Research.

To contribute to:

A systematic review on the effectiveness of GP parkrun referral schemes (parkrun Practice Initiative) on short and long term health outcomes.

A systematic review, with meta-analysis, on MSK injury incidence in “new exercisers”.

Rapid literature review
Topic can be chosen from the list:

• Anatomy online resources
• Clinical skills online resources
• Student perspectives on the usefulness of debriefing in clinical skills training

Qualitative research
A content analysis of freely available You Tube resources for undergraduate medical education to inform their use by students and educators.
Topic can be chosen from the list:

• Anatomy
• Communication skills
• Clinical skills

Projects on ECHO, Point of Care Ultrasound or Cardiac CT. Supervised by Gershan Davies, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine.

How does prior knowledge facilitate new learning and memory in elderly populations? A systematic review supervised by Dr Dorothy Tse

Cognitive mapping, a crucial process of forming and continuously updating mental representations of our environment, which unfortunately tends to decline with age, impairing the ability to assimilate new information (Harris & Wolbers, 2014; O’Keefe & Nadel, 1979). An example of this is how recognizing a new restaurant’s location in a well-known city can demonstrate the role of existing knowledge in facilitating the learning of new information. Our research underscores that the integration of new information into pre-existing cognitive frameworks significantly enhances learning effectiveness (Tse et al., 2007, 2011; van Kesteren et al., 2011, 2012). We hypothesize that while the elderly might face challenges in initially learning these schemas as compared to their younger counterparts, their ability to absorb and remember new information improves substantially once these schemas are established. Your participation will significantly enrich our investigation into the effects of aging on navigation and memory skills.

The impact of alcohol on emotional contagion. A systematic review with meta analysis. Professor Rebecca Monk, Professor Derek Haim, Dr Adam Quereshi

While adverse effects of alcohol consumption are well documented, a body of literature indicates that a key reason for why people drink alcohol relates to its social lubrication effects. Emotional contagion refers to the notion that people “catch” the emotions of others, sharing their affective responses (Barsade, 2002; Lowe et al., 2013; Mandelbaum, 1965). At the same time, it is known that alcohol enhances positive perceptions of others (Aan Het Rot et al., 2008; Fairbairn & Sayette, 2014), impacts mood (Monk et al., 2020), and influences responses to social cues (Collins et al., 1985; Corcoran & Segrist, 1993; Dericco & Garlington, 1977; Garlington & Dericco, 1977). However, the extent to which alcohol consumption may interact with social cues to impact emotion has yet to be fully explored. The aim of this project is therefore to consolidate the literature on how social and affective cue reception is impacted by intoxication. This will entail conducting systematic literature search following PRISMA guidelines and extracting effect sizes for subsequent meta-analysis. 

Work on:

A systematic review of the impact of protein intake on muscle mass loss in paediatric critical illness.

Survival from paediatric critical illness in high income countries is high, the focus now must be on optimising the recovery of survivors. Muscle wasting during critical illness is problematic, so identifying factors that may reduce this is important. A number of single centre studies has examined the impact of protein intake with muscle mass loss, with differing results. Considering these inconsistencies amongst these observational studies (using quadricep ultrasound as the outcome), a systemic review and meta- analysis is now required.

Supervised by Lyvonne Thume, Professor of Critical Care Nursing.

Supervised by Greg Irving, Professor of Primary & Integrated Care. 

Outcome measures used in arts-based interventions for children and young people 9-13: what are the tools used and the concepts measured?

Collaborations across arts-based, social prescribing and health databases: an audit of existing platforms

Supervised by Vicky Karkou, Professor of Arts and Wellbeing.

Supervised by Axel Kaehne, Professor of Health Services Research.