On Clinical Trials Day Bath R&D visited one of the care homes run by Sirona, their local social enterprise. We had a stand at Charlton House in Keynsham. Residents have a broad range of activities which aim to promote independence by developing and maintaining and enhancing people’s skills, interest and abilities. Charlton House has 2 units - Somerdale provides a service for older people with Dementia and Abbey Park which provides a service to older people with a range of physical disabilities. On the day of our visit, the 20th May – Age UK were running an activity day and celebrating the birthday of one of their oldest residents who had just turned 100!
Visitors and residents of the care home were invited to take part in the taste test by saying which of the 3 coloured drinks we had tasted sweeter when in fact they are all the same. We explained the reason for this is that people are biased by how the drink looks. Identical looking regular and gluten free brownies were uses to help explain the concepts of randomisation and blinding, we explained the new drug and the placebo are often made to look the same, but one (the new drug) has the active ingredient and the other one does not (placebo). Finally we offered people regular and sour sweets. We explained people like different tastes so in clinical trials, treatments can work differently for different people too. To make sure researchers know how treatment works for a range of people, we explained lots of people are needed to take part in clinical trials. This helps to make sure treatments are safe and effective for everyone.
On Monday the 23rd May we also run a GCP training course in the University of Bath to celebrate clinical trials day. Attends included people from the NHS and various Departments from the University of Bath.