We want to help students and clinicians at any level from the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases (RNHRD) whether Consultants, Specialist Nurses, Early Career Clinicians or PhD rheumatology students.  Will you join us? Did you know that attending conferences is crucial for professional development of clinicians and researchers? They provide a platform for the latest advancements in the field, knowledge exchange and networking. Last year, BIRD supported eleven clinicians from the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases in the early stages of their careers and early career academic researchers to attend three international scientific conferences - the British Society of Rheumatologists Conference in Manchester, EULAR in Milan and the Skin & Synovium conference in Bath.  Bursaries ranged from travel and accommodation costs of up to £250 per person to attendance fees of £275.  Recipients told us they could not have attended without financial help.

One of BIRD's main aims is to help the career development of professionals in the rheumatology field to ultimately benefit patients. Please help us to support our bursary programme in 2024. Many thanks from the Team at BIRD.

Previous recipients said:

I was honoured to receive a bursary from BIRD to attend the European Rheumatology Conference (EULAR) 2023 in Milan, Italy. I am currently undertaking research investigating biologic treatments in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. I was very interested to attend the psoriatic arthritis poster session, in which key posters were briefly presented by experts. This was very useful to gain an understanding of up-to-date research in this area, including results of clinical trials into new treatments and how to predict which patients with psoriasis will develop psoriatic arthritis.   I had an abstract accepted to the conference which presented a recent patient survey we had conducted, looking into patient experiences of being treated with biologics for psoriatic arthritis. I was therefore lucky to be able to attend a session on ‘Patient Research Partners’, to further appreciate the benefits and challenges of engaging with patient partners when designing and conducting research. As a Dermatology Registrar, this was my first Rheumatology conference, and so I took the chance to attend lectures on other conditions which we share as specialties, including lupus and scleroderma. I was very grateful for the chance to spend time with colleagues and meet other interested researchers.