PAthsoc Research Trainee Initiative (PARTI)

 

What is PARTI?

The PAthsoc Research Trainee Initiative (PARTI) aims to empower and facilitate pathology trainees to run and be involved with collaborative clinical research projects and audits. The structure of the scheme is for a pathology trainee to design and lead projects with project collaborators helping to collect data from local centres. All project leaders and collaborators are credited in publications and presentations.

 

Benefits of the scheme:

• Experience in leading a multicentre research/audit project.
• Multicentre data collection allows larger sample sizes, quantification of rarer diseases and exploration of regional variation.
• Credit in published and presented work.
• Exposure and experience to data collection methods.

 

How does the scheme work?

There are two ways to get involved, as a project leader and as a project collaborator:

Project leader: a pathology trainee who will devise a project that requires data (clinical and pathological data) to be collected from across centres. The trainee will lead the project but must have a supervising senior pathologist (e.g. consultant or senior researcher) who is their point of contact.

Responsibilities of project leader and supervising consultant:

• Devising a project with clear SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) to be submitted and approved by PathSoc.
• Produce the project protocol including research question(s), inclusion and exclusion criteria, data collection items and data analysis methods.
• Create a suitable format for data collection (e.g. REDCap) and ensure data is anonymised and stored in accordance with data protection laws.
• Liaise with project collaborators to ensure local approval is obtained at each centre and share the details of collaborators and centres with PathSoc. Confirmation of local approval at each centre must also be provided to PathSoc.
• Analysis of the data.
• Leading on project write up for journal publication and conference presentations. All project collaborators must be listed as authors in any published or presented work.
• Supply data ‘snippets’ to project collaborators for them to present under their own name.

 

Project collaborator: a pathology trainee (or non-pathology doctor/medical student with an interest in pathology when working with a pathology trainee) who collects data at their local centre for a project. The project collaborator will be given a list of prospective running projects to choose from.

Responsibilities of project collaborator:

• Signing up for an appropriate project where data collection will be possible.
• Seeking and attaining local clinical governance approval for the collection of anonymised patient data for a research project. Confirmation of this sent to the project lead who will share this with PathSoc.
• Identifying and screening eligible patients.
• Data collection set out by the research protocol in a time period agreed between collaborator and project lead.
• Support the project lead on project write up.

 

What is the role of PathSoc?

Our role is to assess the suitability and facilitate projects by bringing together project leaders and collaborators. We aim to have a varied list of registered projects and to help recruit collaborators from a diverse range of locations in the UK. The project leaders however are empowered to lead the project alongside their senior supervisor.

All published/presented work should acknowledge the PARTI scheme and PathSoc. It is expected project leads will provide a short abstract of their work within 3 months of project completion to help PathSoc promote the scheme and celebrate the project success.

 

Who can get involved?

Project leader eligibility:

1. Pathology trainee with a national training number (trainees in LAT or LAS positions are also eligible).
2. Be a concessionary member of PathSoc.
3. Have a senior supervisor (pathology consultant or senior researcher).
4. Submit a project proposal and accept the terms and conditions.

Senior supervisor – A consultant pathologist or senior researcher (PhD holder who is active in research) who can help devise and advise on projects.

Project collaborators eligibility:

• Pathology trainee (trainees in LAT or LAS positions are also eligible).

• Non-pathology doctors (e.g. foundation doctors) may be involved as a project collaborator only when a pathology trainee at the same centre is involved and is happy to oversee/supervise their work. Discretion of involvement will be with the project lead and capacity/nature of the project.
• Medical students – those with a keen interest in pathology are also eligible but as for non-pathology doctors, a local pathology trainee must be involved and oversee the work.

 

Possible suitable projects:

Examples of projects/themes that fit well for the PARTI scheme centre around:

• Epidemiology studies – prevalence, incidence and geographical variation in disease. Particularly in rarer/understudied diseases.
• Outcome studies – prognostication, comparative treatment outcomes, predictive modelling etc.
• Quality of care and health disparities – e.g. assessing adherence rates to RCPath dataset items. Exploring variation in outcomes/reporting in demographic factors (e.g. socioeconomical, race etc).
• Disease surveillance projects – exploring emerging disease patterns and trends, evaluating success of disease surveillance programmes.
• Genomics and precision medicine – projects exploring genomic data and impacts of personalised medicine treatment approaches.
• Multidisciplinary integration – projects exploring concordance between multidisciplinary teams (e.g. radiology, pathology, operative notes).
• Public health and policy – projects looking at screening programmes, financial considerations and resource allocation in pathology services etc.
• Autopsy practice.

 

This is not an exhaustive list, and other themes are encouraged.

 

What projects are not suitable:

• Projects that require Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval or completion of an IRAS form; PARTI focuses on clinical data that can be collected by project collaborators from retrospective patient records.
• Projects requiring reviewing of slides for example, are not suitable.

 

Example project: Incidental prostate cancer in cystoprostatectomy specimens

• Multicentre retrospective cohort study across 6 centres including 9 collaborators.
• Data from 675 patients collected looking at the clinical, histological and outcome data for incidental prostate cancer detected in cystoprostatectomy specimens.
• Results presented by three collaborators at the Ghent Pathology 2025 conference.

 

 

How to Get Involved:

For project collaborators please fill in your details in the form below. PathSoc will be in contact to discuss projects that are ongoing and require a collaborator.

For project lead, please fill in your details in the form below and complete the project summary details. PathSoc will review your submission and notify you of the outcome/requirement for alternation of the protocol. You will then be linked up with project collaborators who will help you collect the data.

Any questions please contact trainees@pathsoc.org