The Centre for Epidemiology Versus Arthritis seeks to appoint an enthusiastic research associate to work on the SLICC Damage Renewal Project.
The SLICC/ACR Damage Index (SDI) (published in 1996) is used in clinical studies and trials to measure the long-term complications that can occur in lupus patients. The SDI contains a list of complications including cataracts, fractures, kidney failure etc. It is widely used and has been found to be a good way to predict future complications also, higher scores are associated with poorer quality of life as reported by patients.
The SLICC group will lead an international team of lupus experts from adult and paediatric practices. The group will have significant patient and carer input co-ordinated through the LFA. It will review the lupus literature and general medical literature to identify possible new items to include and update the definitions of existing items.
The SLICC group will agree new and updated items as a group and through discussions with patients and doctors, agree a system to score these according to their impact and relative importance from these view-points. The group will also test how practical this new index is to use in a routine clinic and make sure that it is consistent when used by different doctors and in different clinics.
This is an international multicentre collaboration so you will be required to travel internationally 2-3 times per year. You will undertake systematic reviews in the areas of SLE and long-term medical complications and comorbidities, employ Delphi techniques to develop consensus for item selection prioritisation and reduction towards a new assessment tool.
You will hold patient and medical professional focus groups to agree prioritisation of work, item selection and weighting and, undertake analysis relating to the metric properties of a new instrument including validation techniques, assessments of reproducibility, inter- and intra-rater agreement approaches.
We expect the post-holder to contribute to ongoing and planned projects in the Centre, and conduct high quality research.
The School is strongly committed to promoting equality and diversity, including the Athena SWAN charter for gender equality in higher education. The School holds a Silver Award which recognises their good practice in relation to gender; including flexible working arrangements, family-friendly policies, and support to allow staff achieve a good work-life balance. We particularly welcome applications from women for this post. All appointment will be made on merit. For further information, please visit:
https://www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/about/equality/
Please note that we are unable to respond to enquiries, accept CVs or applications from Recruitment Agencies.
Name: Professor Ian Bruce
Email: ian.bruce@manchester.ac.uk
Email: hrservices@manchester.ac.uk
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