Frederik Martiny is a medical doctor by background, currently working as a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen.
He recently visited DECIPHer for six weeks to learn more about how to work with optimizing a complex intervention.
What brought you to DECIPHer?
The first time I heard about DECIPHer was when I attended a presentation about the ADAPT guidance by Graham Moore in Aarhus in Denmark back in May 2022. In my PhD project, I have somewhat ‘adapted the ADAPT guidance’, using it to optimize a local innovative practice which involves social medicine consultants advising job centre case workers on how to handle complex sick leave cases, called the SMC-SICK initiative. Graham and I got to talking and I mentioned that we’re expected to do a four-week stay at another research environment during our PhD in Denmark, and before long I had planned to visit DECIPHer! Shortly after, Graham introduced me to Jemma Hawkins, and we met online over the following year to discuss how I could organize the sometimes – well oftentimes – messy process of collaborating with stakeholders on optimizing the initiative.
What was it like settling into your new environment?
I arrived in August 2024 and felt very much like a VIP when Jemma showed me around Cardiff University, SPARK, the best places to get coffee, food and more. Over the next few days, I was introduced to the rest of the DECIPHer team, and I quickly learned that there’s just an amazing culture/research environment here where everybody is welcoming and just as nerdy, if not more, as me about complex interventions – what a thrill that was – and I instantly felt at home.
You can learn quite a lot about other people’s research – and your own – on a walk and talk with great coffee
For the first four weeks, I had the company of Hanna Ristolainen, visiting from Finland. We quickly found our usual spot in DECIPHer’s hot desk area, and we had a lot fun solving jigsaw puzzles in the common area in every break we took – that’s definitely a concept I will be bringing home with me! We both had the chance to present our research projects at DECIPHer’s monthly forum and there we had a good discussion about what it really means to develop/optimize/adapt a complex intervention, how to do pragmatic formative process evaluations and more.
What have you enjoyed?
I have really enjoyed the bi-weekly writing clubs led by Rabeea’h Aslam, which have been a good mix of productive writing sessions, fun conversations and amazing views from the 6th floor balcony in SPARK. Alan Felstead and Jordan Van Godwin showed me that you can learn quite a lot about other people’s research – and your own – on a walk and talk with great coffee or over lunch. Simon Murphy and Maria Boffey introduced me to The School Health Research Network (SHRN) and how they work with knowledge exchange, data infrastructure, and coordinating the priorities and views of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners within their network – really inspiring insights that I hope we can somehow adapt to the Danish setting within my area of vocational rehabilitation and social medicine.
DECIPHer strikes a great balance between a relaxed research environment where you can do puzzles with your colleagues over lunch and still carry out innovative and practice-transforming research.
A big thanks to Graham and Jemma for giving me invaluable advice both before and during my stay here at DECPHer – and not least providing constructive feedback to my lengthy article drafts! Nicola Trigg also deserves a big applause for taking such good care of Hanna and me, taking us hiking in beautiful Wales; making sure we also got another view of Wales than what we could see from our little corner in the hot desk landscape.
Finally, a big thanks to Clare Olson for sharing her insights on communicating research findings and engaging people in research – and for taking time to edit out my Danish-English in this post.
In the last week of my stay, I had the chance to attend DECIPHer’s short courses on feasibility studies, process evaluation and using the ADAPT guidance, which were really both a great learning experience and a good place to meet and discuss with researchers from all around the world.
How has the visit affected your research?
Vising DECIPHer exceeded my expectations by far – It has had a bigger impact on my research than I dared hope for! I had planned to work on the third study within my project whilst here, but I ended up working on tonnes on other stuff because of all the good ideas I had from discussions with people here, including plans for a feasibility study following conversations with Jeremy Segrott, which I am looking forward to continuing online when I get back home.
It seems like DECIPHer has managed to strike a great balance between a relaxed research environment where you can do puzzles with your colleagues over lunch and still carry out innovative and practice-transforming research. I hope I will be able to bring home some of the things I have learned – I am already thinking hard about how I can come back here somehow to visit more of Wales and enjoy the amazing atmosphere and working environment at DECIPHer.
Six weeks have gone by so quick – I am truly grateful to all the people who made my stay here at DECIPHer a great learning experience and just a really good time in general.
Want to know more about Frederik and his research?
Frederik is based at the Center for Research in General Practice at the University of Copenhagen and at the Department of Social Medicine at Frederiksberg Hospital in the Capital Region of Denmark. You can read more about Frederik’s research in this online two-page project description.
Visit Frederik’s research profile here: https://research.ku.dk/search/result/?pure=en%2Fpersons%2F395880.
Or his LinkedIn profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederik-martiny-173368174.
