Early Career Researchers

Dr Ella Dzora is a Paediatric Trainee

Leeds Hospitals Charity invested over £200,000 to fund a three-year project to provide three doctors, including Ella, a year’s fellowship and specialist training at the Leeds Children’s Clinical Research Facility (CRF).

Ella completed her fellowship in September 2024 having worked across many clinical teams, including Oncology, Diabetes, Endocrinology, the Critical Care Unit, Neonatal Intensive Care, Orthopaedics and A&E to help deliver early phase drug trials as well as Randomised Controlled Trials to improve inpatient care.

The funding for her role included educating and supporting ward teams, creating space for research activities to happen that busy clinicians might not have time or capacity to deliver in a busy ward environment.

A nurse before she became a doctor, research, Ella says, isn’t always about “finding a cure or a fabulous new treatment,” it can, “drive better, improved care by making small changes to the way we work.”

“On a personal note, my son was recently diagnosed with diabetes. When I was a medical student the way we were taught to manage diabetes has since undergone huge changes. Because of new technologies it’s so much easier now for him to manage and take control of; it’s not something that changes and devastates his life, but actually something he can build into it, and manage.”

Research is crucial to such advancements: “If the heart of what we do is wanting to provide excellent care, part of what we do has to be involved in doing research. It’s not an optional extra. But it’s the first thing that drops if the clinical environment gets busy.  So having specific funding gives more capacity.”

She says there are different types of research studies: “The trials that come from drug companies which many parents want their child to be on because it’s the only way of getting a child with a rare disease access to that particular drug.” And then the inpatient work: “Where we’re comparing two different protocols that are already standard practice and trying to achieve small but important margins in terms of improvements.”

The latter is harder to recruit volunteer patients for.

“They are often in acute situations, their child is unwell, and they’re being told we don’t have the best answer, but we want to find the best answer, and the only way to find it is clinical research in situ. That is harder for people to understand. A huge part of my role is being available, so clinicians who don’t have time can refer me to discuss it and explain to families what’s going on. When you have that time to connect to people, and explain why, they’re happier to be involved.”

She gives an example of the balance in feeding calories to new-borns without putting pressure on tiny developing guts, or risking infections. “It isn’t about curing anything or finding a fabulous new treatment but finding the best way of doing it so we’re putting babies at least risk. Often the only way of finding answers is by doing good, robust, clinical trials. It’s about making outcomes better, even if it’s by small increments."

Ella found the clinicians at Leeds to be “passionate about health equality.”

“They are excellent role models in getting that balance between hands-on clinical work and improving patient care through active research.”

Her specialist interest is infectious disease, and she’s currently doing a Master’s, but her drive is to help “embed research” into clinical care. She feels it shouldn’t just be the remit of academics, but an opportunity for all clinical teams, and patients, to get involved in.

“A lot of what I’ve done this year is in education and working with clinical teams to try and support them to embed research and improve recruitment in the inpatient clinical studies.”

Being a doctor with a dedicated research role, she said, supports the wider clinical team to help make research an ‘everyday event,’ as she understands their workload and pressures.

“I’m hoping by the end of my year, the cohorts of other trainees and the rest of the multi-disciplinary team will have an increased passion for research, and if I’ve done that, then I feel like I’ve done a good job.”

All photo credits: Ruby Lee
@ruby.angelaleephoto
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