I think that is a real risk which is important to try to guard against. My worry with waiting until there has been a complete overhaul though, as you say, is we may be waiting a while, and if there are some interventions which we know have value, both for staff individually, and at a more team focussed or wider system focussed level, then should we wait or is it good to offer what we can whilst still shouting about the problems in the wider system?

Yes! Couldn't agree more. I got very interested in the organisational aspects of compassion fatigue. I ended up doing a masters in organisational psychology and thinking about how some of these ideas about workplace conditions might influence staff ability to provide compassionate care. I'm in the very early stages now of a 5 year project but the aim is to develop a multi-level intervention, not something which is just for staff, but which also involves managers and possibly commissioners.

The picture here is very interesting and researcher Amy Orben has done some fab work in this area: https://www.amyorben.com

It depends on how we use social media. If we use it to compare ourselves negatively to others and to isolate ourselves then it's unhelpful. If we seek out accounts which are affirming and social links which help us feel connected then it can be helpful.

We need to be careful though, I think, as some dilemmas which occur online e.g. sharing personal photos with wide groups of people, can have devastating effects on young people

I use mindfulness, both myself in my personal life and professionally with other people. It's not for everyone but I find it very useful.

Such an important thing to think about. We spend a lot of time with ourselves and if we're having a go the whole time it can have a negative effect. One question I find useful is to ask yourself what you would say to a good friend. We're often much meaner to ourselves than to someone else we love.

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This book by Mary Welford is a good one too: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compassionate-Mind-Approach-Building-Self-Confidence/dp/1780330324/ref=asc_df_1780330324/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310805565966&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18171044736043241899&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045631&hvtargid=pla-537293131368&psc=1&th=1&psc=1

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And in the new book I just have out one of the chapters is all about speaking to ourselves more kindly (April's chapter). This is on sale at only 99p for a few days if you want the e-book. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Change-Your-Mind-Therapy-ebook/dp/B0B4BTF8RH/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1671200145&sr=1-1

This sounds tricky... And christmas is a time when we often find ourselves stuck in repeating patterns in relationships with people we have known for a long time. One thing that can sometimes help is thinking about what you can do differently to shift the dynamic slightly. Can you make a conscious effort to talk more about your own stuff and not wait to be asked? The results might be surprising!

This is a very interesting new area of research. I don't know enough about it but good people to read/listen to include Suzi Gage who has a fab podcast on all things drugs: https://play.acast.com/s/saywhytodrugs and Val Curren who does really interesting research in this area: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/people/valerie-curran

Hopefully at some point but it isn't yet

I think of most psychological diagnoses as on a spectrum with more common experiences, and I suppose I feel fascinated by the relationships with the people who I see rather than thinking about an illness in particular. Having said that I’ve worked a lot in wards with teenagers, and worked with some young people who are experiencing psychosis, and I think that’s one areas which is open to misunderstanding, with people seeing it as something dangerous or totally “other”, when again it is actually a spectrum of experience that we all lie on somewhere. All of us can experience paranoia and lots of people have beliefs that others don’t necessarily share. The difference is when it affects someone’s life negatively.

Fab question. I think probably a lot of the same mechanisms are at work, but the context is quite different so would affect how an intervention could be delivered and what would feel acceptable. It’s a huge issue in caregiving in general though. Lots of work done with foster carers too.

Wow fab thing to think about. I think it depends on which aspects of modern life and how we are using those aspects. Some things I think are definitely not helpful, for example exam culture for children and young people. Others are more nuanced, for example social media can be both positive and negative depending on how it’s used.

Great question. Think this absolutely is a risk of interventions which only target individual staff members. The one I am designing is intended to be a multi-level intervention – so to target both staff members with things they can do that might help, and also to try to tackle some of the more systemic problems, via influence on managers and creative thinking about how to overcome massive workloads and tricky rota-ing issues etc. It doesn’t help with the chronic underfunding of the NHS and undervaluing of the nursing profession. I’m really hoping that the current strikes will prompt some engagement from the government and the possibility of some solutions to that.

Hi everyone! It's Lucy! Good to be here! Thanks for your questions. I’ll get stuck in!

>What part of your research excites you all the most?

Thank you for your question. We are currently optimising the design of the microfluidic device to efficiently isolate exosomes from an ovarian cancer cell line. So still at its very early stages. The key challenge is to capture cancer cell-derived exosomes (the biomarkers we are interested in) from the total population of exosomes (healthy cell-derived + cancer cell-derived). This is because the latter are a very small fraction of the total population and also because of their size (a few nanometres) it is harder to capture and detect them with existing technology. Overall, this is a really exciting project, and when realised, would pave way for a national level screening programme for early detection of ovarian cancer. The parts that we are most excited about are(i) identifying reliable biomarkers for early stages of ovarian cancer and (ii) being able to effectively capture and detect them within our device.

Thanks for the question 😊 the vortex mixers do have multiple uses. We are using a few approaches to develop the devices; photolithography is one of them as you say, but we are also using higher resolution 3D printers to produce cheaper at scale microfluidic devices.

Exactly :) we would be able to use smaller amounts

Sure, thanks your question, microfluidics enables us to do lots of different things with tiny volumes/amounts of fluids which are applied to lots of different fields from bioengineering to catalysis. By having micro-sized channels, we can incorporate them into devices to enable us to work on much smaller scales. This helps us investigate fundamental questions such as how a fluid flows at the microscale (around the thickness of a single human hair) but also enables high-throughput screening and manufacturing through multiplexing (putting lots of devices together) microfluidic devices. Some vaccines are manufactured through high-throughput microfluidics. Microfluidics can give us the ability to have lab-on-chips, where we miniaturise all the components, we can carry out in a lab onto one chip.

Hi everyone. Sorry we're late, we were having some technical difficulties.

We’ve contacted Fangtasia as a potential business partner :)

The typical shelf life for donated RBCs is up to 42 days. We are currently working on answering this question, but we would expect it to have a longer shelf life as it a pure population of young and pure population of red blood cells.

Thanks for you question! I (Sandhya) am a biotechnologist (so expert in bioreactors) and stem cell engineer. I (David) very much have a background in biology – I did my undergrad in Applied Biology and a Masters in Stem Cells and Regeneration. I chose this project because I was keen to work with stem cells and bioreactors, and because I wanted to contribute to a project that could make a real different to people’s lives and wellbeing. I (Chan) am a (bio)chemical engineer (Chan) and although I had taken a few biochemical modules on how to produce biomass, cells, and proteins in a bioreactor, I had to learn the cell biology of RBCs and the biological process behind it. I have chosen this project because as a biochemical engineer, I enjoy optimisation and the production process, but I always enjoyed medical science, which triggered my interest in this project.

Thank you for the question, if blood transfusion is the current mode of treatment, then yes our researach will definitely be of help. In addition, for people requiring regular transfusions, the cells we manufacture would theoretically be better in terms of blood type matching and risk of immune rejected (also known as alloimmunization)

Thank you for the great question! It would definitely be cool to make extra efficient red blood cells that work way better than the naturally occuring ones! It would be a whole new area of research for blood biologists. However, as engineers, we are currently working with the cells that the biologists have developed and given to us, so the naturally occuring red blood progenitor cells and we are aiming to grow and mature them in red blood cells that would deform in the same manner (essential to allow them to navigate through blood vessels) and they bind and release oxygen in the same manner to naturally occuring ones in our bodies.

Thanks for the question! We currently work with red blood progenitor cells that will give rise to the universal blood type RBCs.

Thank you for your question! Bioreactor technologies are being developed for a variety of cell types and this is an area of active research. There are many challenges with growing any cell type outside the body including red blood cells (RBCs). We aim to manufacture RBCs to address the growing shortage of donated blood globally. Within the different cell types in blood, we are focussed on RBCs since they are the oxygen-carying component of blood and hence, if we can replenish them for a patient who has suffered major blood loss, we can save the patient's life and their body is then able to replenish the other cell types in the blood tissue.

We can manufacture RBCs using existing bioreactor technologies, but these technologies are not yet fully optimized for cost-effective manufacture. Our research focuses on optimizing these technologies (that were developed for other cell types) specifically for cost-effect mass RBC manufacture. Current cost of donated blood is ~£125/unit (it is >£500/unit for rarer blood types) while that for bioreactor-produced RBCs is >£5,000/unit. Our research aims to design better bioreactors to bring down costs closer to that of donated blood.