Abstract

This report contributes towards one of the aims of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, to develop a highly skilled workforce of trained clinical researchers and educators within the context of a rapidly changing UK healthcare environment. In particular, this report examines the current role of nurses as researchers and educators and investigates the barriers that are preventing them from reaching their full potential in these areas. It envisages a more flexible career structure that will develop the clinical academic role – combining clinical and academic work - as the norm for those nurses who successfully pursue a research career, rather than obliging them to pursue one role at the expense of the other. It recognises the broad range of research skills needed by nurses working in many different research environments and includes a spectrum of training opportunities. It supports and promotes the development of a clinical research environment that provides opportunities for nurses to pursue research careers at all levels and that will ultimately produce research leaders and academics of the future.
Building on this analysis, and taking account of the framework for modernising nursing careers (MNC) being led by the Chief Nursing Officers, the report makes recommendations for enabling nursing to respond to the exciting opportunities that are being created by emerging research and development policies in the health sector. It envisages a future in which a larger number of graduate nurses – though still a minority of the profession – would be active in high quality clinical and other health related research at various levels.
The recommendations take the ongoing changes in the UK research environment into account by increasing both research capacity and capability in the nursing profession. Increasing capacity will expand the total number of nurses involved in research and help to provide the engine room for the new emerging infrastructure. At the same time increasing capability should ensure that a greater proportion of this increased number of clinical academic nurses is capable of operating at the highest levels of research.