Clare Macdonald is a GP and ARC West Midlands Maternity Theme PhD student researching the GP postnatal maternal 6-8 week consultation.
In July, Clare Macdonald attended the 15th NIHR Doctoral Training Camp. Knowing how important putting together successful grant applications is for an academic career, Clare attended knowing this was a great opportunity and was delighted to be given a place.
The main task of the camp was to prepare, in full, a grant application for the fictional ‘Making People Healthier’ research programme. This would include a detailed proposal, rationale, costings, research team details, timeline and plain English summary, delivered to a strict deadline around 24 hours later. Clare’s team quickly settled on a topic, and with expert mentoring from our experienced academic and PPIE expert, delivered the application.
On the final morning, all teams presented their project and took questions from the panel. Clare’s team’s submission was the winning application. Clare would strongly encourage anyone given the opportunity to attend future iterations of the course. Clare also provided feedback that the composition of the course and opportunity to connect with other PhD students from across the NIHR infrastructure was amazing.