Donna Smith Email & Phone Number

A strong advocate for providing access to research for all.My mission... To advance healthcare equity and improve health outcomes through the delivery of high-quality, impactful research.Every day, I push myself to find new and better ways of working independently and as part of a team. My leadership abilities have led me to successfully guide diverse teams in cancer, surgery and early-phase drug trials across various countries.Having excellent organisational skills has enabled me to coordinate clinical trials from concept to publication. For 2 years I led the hepatobiliary oncology trials team at Cancer Research CTU, and now, as a Senior Trial Manager with the amazing NIHR Global Surgery Unit, coordinating and driving a portfolio of randomised controlled trials across 80 sites, 7 countries and 3 continents! I have built strong and enduring partnerships with colleagues across the Global South and have leveraged my excellent communication skills to carry out on-site monitoring visits for multiple trials in Benin, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria and India, which is considerably more difficult than in the UK setting. Navigating global teams is not without its challenges. Cultural diversity, language barriers, multiple time zones and complex regulatory frameworks all add to the complexity of collaborative working. But, the rewards far outweigh the negatives—my biggest success is delivering one of the world’s largest surgical trials in Low- and Middle-Income countries ~13,300 patients, which will change surgical practice across the 🌎! https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01884-0 In my old life, spanning over a decade, I was the lead oncology research nurse for upper GI, colorectal and hepatobiliary cancers in one of the largest hospitals in the UK—screening, recruiting and providing cancer treatments to clinical trial patients. I am a qualified registered nurse (although not currently practising) and have a Master of Science (MSc) in Clinical Oncology.There is no better feeling than being part of a collaborative team working toward the same goals and making a difference through research for individuals, their families and the wider community. As Helen Keller once said ‘Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much’.I am immensely proud of the outputs I have contributed to while working in research. I have seen first-hand how research can change and improve people’s lives, and there is nothing else I would rather do.