The Rise in Trauma & Orthopaedic Trainee-Led Research and Audit Collaborative Projects in the United Kingdom Since the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

Introduction: There has been a rise in trainee-led trauma & orthopaedic multi-centre research collaborative projects globally. These increase trainee involvement in research with an opportunity to deliver highly generalisable results on a particular topic. Objective: To evaluate the number of trauma & orthopaedic trainee-led research collaborative projects that took part since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK and compare them to projects from 2019. Methods: This was a retrospective study that evaluated trauma & orthopaedic trainee-led national collaborative projects within the UK since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown (March 2020 to June 2021). Our exclusion criteria included any regional collaborative projects, pre Covid- 19 projects and projects of other surgical specialities. Results: In 2019, 0 trainee-led collaborative projects were commenced nationally in the UK. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we identified 10 trainee-led collaborative trauma & orthopaedic projects with 6 being published so far. The level of evidence ranged between 3 and 4 and included 5 Audits and 5 cohort studies. The patients that were included in the studies ranged from 927 to 140,231 from a total of 2249 centres. Conclusion: Covid-19 has placed significant challenges across healthcare. However, one positive aspect is the increase in multi-centre trainee-led collaborative projects within the UK. Our study highlights the feasibility of a trainee-led high quality collaborative research projects in the UK and the availability of new tools such as social media and centralised confidential online databases such as Redcap® facilitates such projects. Therefore, we recommend expanding this trainee-led collaborative platform in the field of trauma & orthopaedics worldwide.