TY - JOUR T1 - The Volunteers in Research programme: supporting COVID-19 research and improving medical training in parallel JF - Clinical Medicine JO - Clin Med SP - 182 LP - 188 DO - 10.7861/clinmed.2020-1072 VL - 21 IS - 3 AU - Tamsin McKinnon AU - Alastair Watson AU - Liam Richards AU - Jackie Sears AU - Matthew J Brookes AU - Christopher A Green Y1 - 2021/05/01 UR - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/21/3/182.abstract N2 - COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on society, global healthcare and daily life. The redeployment of research staff to patient-facing roles in the NHS left a depleted workforce to deliver critical urgent public health research (UPHR). We aimed to support UPHR studies and medical student training by developing and implementing a medical student Volunteers in Research programme. We further sought to gain insights about medical students’ perceptions of this programme. We collected prospective data and conducted a retrospective survey as part of a service evaluation to assess the value of this clinical research experience to students, as well as motivators and barriers to taking part. The Volunteers in Research programme successfully supported UPHR studies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We generated important insights to help aid the wider implementation of this programme nationally to support essential research and medical student education. ER -