Ben’s project, 'Improving Wrist Injury Pathways' looks at improving care for people who have painful wrist injuries and normal x-rays when they are first seen. The evidence shows that early MRI scans improve care for this group of patients and saves the NHS money, by being able to pick up the serious scaphoid injuries which are invisible on the x-rays and by reassuring the majority of patients without a scaphoid injury. Ben’s work will look at why it’s difficult to introduce early MRI in the NHS.
The funding will allow Ben to continue his current mixed methods study, to understand this problem and then develop way of trying to help fix it. It will also allow Ben to develop a data platform as part of the intervention with industry collaborators Pro-Mapp.
On receiving the funding, Ben said ‘I am delighted to receive this ORUK grant as it will help support this work which aims to improve wrist injury pathways for patients. Our background work has proven that it is difficult to provide early MRI for this group of patients, and this study aims to build on that by first understanding the problem better.'