At Our Lady’s Hospice & Care Services, we are committed to promoting evidence-based care and practice throughout the organisation and work to create a strong research culture.
This necessitates on-going research into both current interventions and models of care, as well as novel interventions and models of care. As such, we are committed to facilitating organisation-wide research across all our specialties to include our patient/resident voice.
We endeavour to become a centre of excellence in collaboration with our academic partners in terms of clinical research (in specialist palliative care, gerontology, and rheumatology), and to undertake research that is original in nature, clinically relevant, and academically and methodologically robust.
We endeavour to undertake both internally generated research studies, and to collaborate with external researchers and organisations (both nationally and internationally). We also undertake all types of research (e.g. clinical, non-clinical; academic, commercial), and research involving patients, carers, and healthcare professionals and volunteers.
We also encourage our staff to undertake research, and especially to undertake research-based higher qualifications in conjunction with our academic partners (Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin). We have strong links with these academic partners, and with the local healthcare providers, and will work to develop further collaborative research initiatives.
We also collaborate with the Palliative Care Research Network of the All Ireland Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care. OLH&CS endeavour to provide research education and training opportunities for its clinical staff in order to facilitate research within its clinical services.
Academic Department of Palliative Medicine (ADPM)
The Academic Department of Palliative Medicine (ADPM) was set up by Professor Declan Walsh in 2012. It represents a collaboration between Trinity College Dublin (TCD), University College Dublin (UCD), and Our Lady’s Hospice & Care Services (OLH&CS). Professor Walsh returned to the USA in 2016, but continued to support the ADPM in the following years. Professor Andrew Davies was appointed as Head of Department in July 2020, and started working in the ADPM in January 2021.
Currently, the ADPM are undertaking research within Our Lady’s Hospice & Care Services, St James’s Hospital, St Vincent’s Hospital, St Luke’s Hospital, and we have a number of studies involving sites in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. We are also involved in a number of other international studies (insert link to ‘ADPM Current Research’).
At the present time the ADPM has 8 PhD students and 1 MD student.
Contact: researchteam@olh.ie / (01) 498 6235