FAQs

What do I do when I start running low on Liofilchem consumables at our site?

Contact your country PI as a first step. They can then reach out to other sites within the country to collate requirements before contacting their UK contact and / or project lead and program manager with an order for the country. Please bear in mind that orders will need to be received at least four weeks before reaching the country after ordering.

What if there is missing data in the REDCap?

Please go back to the research nurse/research doctor that input the information and ask them if there was a reason for the missing data. Please go back through the clinical notes to input relevant information. Please try to ensure all data fields are complete before upload and that missing data is chased up as soon as possible. If this is a recurrent issue, please go through the training again with them.

We are unsure of something at the site, who should I contact?

Please contact the country PI as a first port of call to clarify anything that you need. Following this, they / you can contact your UK country contact (where relevant), project lead and program manager with any queries. Please do not hesitate to reach out.

We think that we might have an outbreak on one of our wards, what should we do?

Contact your country PI. Follow your standard practices regarding this, but please also notify the project lead and program lead. Upon notification, we will try to prioritise sequencing potential outbreak isolates. Please bear in mind this will not be a real time service, but we can let you know the relatedness retrospectively. We can also prioritise the site environmental samples from the timeframe in question to investigate if we find the bacteria on hospital surface swabs. Again, this cannot be a real time process, but can communicate this retrospectively.

A lot of mothers have told they don’t want to take part in the study

We expect some mothers not to want to be part of the study and they can refuse or withdraw at any time without affecting care. If you notice that most mothers do not want to take part in the study, please contact the country PI for further discussion and evaluation of your enrolment procedure. The country PI can contact the relevant UK team to discuss any issues and we will try to help resolve these where possible.

We are finding a lot of potential contaminants in the blood cultures

Please evaluate your blood collection procedure as well as your laboratory sample handling. Please contact your country PI to discuss this, an internal will likely be required to review this. Please also notify your specific country UK contact where relevant, project lead, program lead and PI. A site visit may be put in place to go through techniques to reduce contamination. In the meantime, please keep sending isolates from positive blood cultures.