HealthSense has always been passionate about supporting students of medicine and healthcare disciplines to learn how to recognise and produce high quality research evidence.

Being able to evaluate research protocols is a key skill for clinicians. It calls for an understanding of the principles of sound research including how to frame questions, construct a suitable research methodology, and know the importance of ethics and consent.

Based on our experience of more than two decades of running an annual Student Prize competition that encourages students to test their research skills, our Student section has been developed by HealthSense volunteers including doctors and our enthusiastic student team. 

The resources below will be particularly useful to students entering the HealthSense Student Prize competition. We hope to develop the resources further in the future.

  • The HealthSense Student Prize competition has awarded over £20,000 in prizes to date. Running through each Spring term, this short essay competition encourages students to test their research skills by ranking hypothetical research protocols by the quality of evidence they could generate. Entries are invited from two categories: Medical and Dental Students; and Students of Nursing, Midwifery and Professions Allied to Medicine. In each group there is a first prize of £500 and up to five runner-up prizes of £100. A full list of past winners can be found on the HealthSense Student Prize page. This important and unique competition is a cornerstone of HealthSense’s mission to promote good evidence in healthcare, and we are extremely grateful to the Royal College of Surgeons of England for their generous support.
  • Evaluating research protocols See this example of a short, simple clinical trial protocol followed by several examples of good critiques. These are brief and readable, but with enough detail to help you develop your own evaluative framework, which can then be applied to both research protocols and published research papers.
  • Recommended reading This list is packed with links to books, websites, journal articles, worksheets, and other free resources that support learning about aspects of quality clinical research.
  • Student research Read research conducted and published by students, with HealthSense support.
  • Join as a student member for free (conditions apply).
  • Read our past newsletters