Register Champions – Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

The team at Northumbria have shown considerable dedication to the BSRBR-RA study. Having first recruited in 2002, a new team started working on the register in 2021 and since then, have recruited more than 150 participants. As register champions in 2025, they took part in a discussion with Professor Marwan Bukhari, Chair of the BSR Registers and Research Committee, and register champions from other BSR registers. Their contributions are shared below.

Donna Gray and Sandra Rose, BSRBR-RA Register Champions

What works really well.

Clinics

There is a face to face 3-month clinic at one of the hospitals for patients who have started on biologic therapy. Participants will have already been approached about the study and consent is obtained at the clinics in person. This works well, as prior to this, the reliance on postal consent form was a barrier. Postal consent is still used when patients aren’t seen at the clinic, due to the wide geographical area that the Trust covers.

Principal Investigator

Donna is a Rheumatology Nurse Specialist and is the PI for the study. She sees this as a real benefit to their recruitment as, she feels that she, “has a little more grasp on everything; you know who you’ve got working with you.” Donna values the team that she has working with her, including Sandra, who does a lot of the data entry. They also see the value of working with the wider team, including pharmacy and research staff.

Words of advice.

Donna’s advice to others was to engage the team around you. At Northumbria, there are opportunities to promote the studies that they work on. These opportunities include:

• A monthly business meeting, which has a section on research.
• Weekly therapeutics meetings.

These meetings help in, “Keeping people mindful that it (BSRBR-RA) is ongoing and something that we’re doing all of the time.”

You can watch the whole video of the conversation with BSRBR-RA, BSRBR-PsA and UK JIA register champions on the BSR Website.

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