Waiting at the Tavistock
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Waiting at the Tavistock Waiting Times: Speaking of Waiting, at the Tavistock (GIDS and AYAS) Publicly engaged research with the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) and Adolescent and Young Adult Services (AYAS), Tavistock Centre, London
IRAS ID
307761
Contact name
Michael J Flexer
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Exeter
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
This research is part of the multi-strand, Wellcome-funded Waiting Times project, a collaboration between University of Exeter and Birkbeck, University of London. The research project as a whole explores different facets of waiting and time in relation to healthcare, illness and well-being.
This ethics application relates to a strand of fieldwork being conducted by Dr Michael J Flexer, the publicly engaged research fellow on the Waiting Times project, and Dr Jordan Osserman, a research fellow and trainee psychoanalyst. The overarching objective of the research strand is to generate and archive stories of waiting.
Experiences of waiting and of different and disturbed temporalities are characteristic of accessing healthcare and suffering ill health. Waiting has long been an important proxy for the quality (and sustainability) of the NHS, and is a an indicative barometer of service-user 'satisfaction'. At the same time, too little qualitative and critical work has been done on the actual lived experience(s) of waiting. This strand of research looks to engage service-users of Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) and Adolescent and Young Adult Services (AYAS) at Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and co-create different story-telling methods to generate texts for the archive and for critical analysis in a humanities monograph on the temporalities of waiting and health.
The field research will run until December 2022, when the Waiting Times project ends. Over the course of the study, Dr Flexer and Dr Osserman hope to recruit approximately 140 people into the study.
REC name
South Central - Berkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/SC/0077
Date of REC Opinion
22 Mar 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion