The HaPPeN team

Dominic Power is a Consultant Hand and Peripheral Nerve Surgeon at the Birmingham Hand Centre and co-founder of the West Midlands Brachial Plexus and Peripheral Nerve Injury Service. His clinical work is predominantly focused on the management of nerve injury, paralysis and nerve pain. In 2014 he co-founded the HaPPeN research group to develop high quality clinical trials in Hand Surgery, Plastic Surgery and Peripheral Nerve Surgery. He was appointed as an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer in the School of Inflammation and Ageing at the Birmingham University Medical School and a Senior Academic Clinical Fellow at the Aston University Medical School in 2018. 

He is a member of the research committee for the BSSH (2018-2020) in the UK. He is a member of the ESPNR (European Society for the Study of Peripheral Nerve Repair and Regeneration) and adviser to the IFSSH subcommittee on peripheral nerve surgery in the UK. 

In 2018 he established the UK Peripheral Nerve Clinical Research Network (UK-PNCRN) to link with other specialists in the UK and facilitate research collaboration and  translation of laboratory research to clinical practice, enabling rapid evaluation of new technologies. 

Dominic is the lead for peripheral nerve surgery in the HaPPeN team and is the Principle Investigator for CoNNECT, Protect NEURO, Cat-Pinch, Scoping, MAP and COMBINE studies. 

He is the Chief Investigator for the RANGER, Match and Sensation NOW studies in the UK. 

In 2018 Dominic joined as co-applicant with the NDORMS trials unit in Oxford and the RSTN for the NEON project, developing a multi-centre study proposal in response to the NIHR HTA call for a UK surgical study to evaluate digital nerve repair. 

His research interests include scar free healing in peripheral nerve repair, optimising neural regeneration and exploring the potential for axon fusion repair after transection nerve injury.

He has more than 100 peer reviewed publications and during the last 5 years he and his team has delivered more than 150 research podium and poster presentations at national and international academic meetings and conferences.In 2018 he was the guest editor for the Journal of Musculoskeletal Medicine and Research special edition on Peripheral Nerve Surgery which was published in Q1 2019.

He has a major commitment to medical education teaching orthopaedics, plastics and neurosurgery trainees on several national and regional training programmes. He is regularly invited to lecture on advanced peripheral nerve surgery reconstruction with more than 200 lectures delivered in the last 5 years. He delivers practical technique training with UK and international basic, advanced and nerve transfer surgery cadaveric workshops. He is the invited international faculty lead for the Singapore "Advances in Peripheral Nerve Surgery" course is now in its 5th year. He is a faculty member for the WAPS Plastic Surgery courses in the UK and delivers lectures and tutorials on brachial plexus surgery, examination and tendon transfers to candidates preparing for the FRCS Plast examination.

Dominic teaches undergraduate programmes in anatomy and nerve surgery in Birmingham and is the module lead for nerve for the Uk hand diploma delivering tutorials and work based assessments for the Birmingham hand fellowship and the UK interface fellows in hand surgery. He has a research group with supervision of  candidates at various stages of their research and clinical medical careers. He supervises BSc anatomy students and MSc Neurosciences, MSc Trauma (Birmingham) and MSc Hand Surgery (Manchester) programmes in the UK. 

Dominic was appointed as the chief editor for the OrthOracle Hand, Wrist and Peripheral Nerve Atlas in 2017. OrthOracle is a digital platform delivering high quality procedural training with enhanced CPD. The platform is accredited by the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in the UK and the British Orthopaedic Association. Dominic has delivered more than 30 chapters and the team have contributed and edited more than 100 hand surgery procedures, producing the largest available procedure archive for hand and nerve surgery.

Dominic's clinical interests include peripheral nerve injury, adult brachial plexus injury, spasticity surgery, nerve transfer surgery and the surgical management of nerve pain. The unit in Birmingham has grown to receive more than 80 complex nerve referrals per month in addition to the 50 new cases seen and treated with hand trauma at the Birmingham Hand Centre. 

He has considerable experience as a consultant, providing guidance to the medical devices industry on product development, utility, surgeon training, market development and clinical trial design. He has provided guidance to investment firms for the biomedical sector.

Suzanne is a Senior Clinical Specialist Occupational Therapist (Band 8a) at the Birmingham Hand Centre specialising within the field of upper limb therapy.

The role includes academic hand therapy with education and professional development responsibilities and research therapy leadership for the Hand, Plastics and Peripheral Nerve Research Network (HaPPeN) within the Birmingham Hand Centre at UHB.

Sue is leading and supporting a number of projects that are clinician and therapy led locally and nationally.  She is the chief investigator for SCOPING - a clinical rehabilitation study evaluating the predictive capabilities of early clinical signs and thermographic imaging in the recovery of mixed motor-sensory nerve injury.

Sue is a member of  the British Association of Hand Therapists Clinical Evidence Committee (BAHT CEC). She is a reviewer for the BAHT Journal, Hand Therapy.

Sue has a major interest in education and leads  BAHT level II training courses on the Surgery and Therapy Management following Flexor and Extensor tendon repair. She is the training lead for hand therapy for the BSSH Diploma for Surgery of the Hand for the Birmingham Hand Fellowship programme. Her clinical interests are hand trauma and rehabilitation of tendon and nerve transfers for the management of upper limb paralysis.

Caroline Miller is a clinical academic upper limb physiotherapist working in the Shoulder / Upper Limb team and the Peripheral Nerve team at UHB. She was a founding member of the HaPPeN team. She is the lead investigator on a number of nationally funded research grants (MAP and CoMBInE studies)  at UHB and her evaluation of nerve injury rehabilitation is instrumental to the delivery of the HaPPeN trials portfolio.

She completed a prestigous NIHR doctoral fellowship in 2022 which gained consensus from patients, therapists and reconstructive peripheral nerve surgeons on an international core outcome dataset for the assessment of adult traumatic brachial plexus injuries. She is on the steering committee of the Association of Trauma and Orthopaedic Physiotherapists in the UK and is co chair of the West Midlands Council of Allied Health Professionals in Research. She reviews for numerous national and international rehabilitation journals and reviews research grants for the British Association of Hand therapy. 

Chris qualified as a nurse in 2014 and began his career on an acute neurosurgical ward. 

He embarked on a career in research in 2017 , joining the NIHR SRMRC Trauma Research team. He gained valuable exposure and experience in delivery of research in specialities such as Critical Care, Neuroscience, Anaesthetics, Trauma and Hands. Since then he has worked across other specialities such as cancer and COVID. 

Between 2020 and 2022, he aided in the development of a COVID Research team at UHB as a response to the pandemic. He played a key role in the delivery of this portfolio and gained valuable experience in the development, set-up and delivery of studies and subsequently co-lead the team between 2021 and 2022. 

He joined HaPPeN in 2022 as the Project Manager to lead on the delivery of the group's portfolio and coordinate the strategic objectives of the team. 

Tomas  Madura is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon specialising in hand and peripheral nerve surgery working at the Birmingham Hand Centre, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. 

He is also a Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham. He is a member of the British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons,  European Society for the Study of Peripheral Nerve Repair and Regeneration and sits on the research committee of the British Society for the Surgery of the Hand (2017-2019). 

Tomas has been involved in the basic and translational research in the field of posttraumatic regeneration of the peripheral nerve since the year 2002. During his PhD studies at the Department of Molecular Neuroscience, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine he investigated molecular mechanisms underlying the regeneration after injury to spinal cord and peripheral nerves. 

He then moved to the University of Manchester as the NIHR Clinical Lecturer, where he continued his postdoctoral research alongside clinical training in plastic surgery. His focus turned to the tissue-engineering and stem-cells based approaches to improve nerve regeneration after injury.  Tomas has a proven track record in formulating high-impact research topics, securing funding, supervising researchers at various levels and disseminating scientific findings on national an international fora. 

Petros Mikalef is a Hand and Spasticity surgeon who works at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham and has an honorary consultant appointment at the Birmingham Children's Hospital where he supports the team in managing spasticity from cerebral palsy. 

He works for NPP in the Midlands, assessing and managing patients with Spasticity. He has completed Fellowship training in Hand Surgery and in Spasticity Surgery and written extensively on spasticity management. His classification system for surgical neurectomy is adopted internationally.

He is a member of the Surgery panel for the Consensus Committee on the Management of post-stroke spasticity at the World Conger on Spasticity scheduled for Okinawa, Japan, 2020.

Petros provides support to the peripheral nerve and hand teams in HaPPeN and is developing an animal model to evaluate interventions for spasticity, a device for improving the results of neurectomy and a clinical trial to evaluate elective neurectomy in the management of upper limb spasticity after stroke.

He is a recognised expert in the field of spasticity surgery and has a number of clinical research projects in development within this field.

The HaPPeN team has successfully delivered a hybrid clinical / research post for trainees at JSD level looking to develop their portfolio and gain experience in trial development, delivery and management within a supportive environment. A new post will be shortly announced to start in summer 2023.