The chat will be hosted by Hazel Roddam, supported by Sophie Chalmers, Ellie Jones and Milly Heelan, based around this 2019 paper: International Perspectives of Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals Clinical Academic Roles: Are We at Tipping Point? Debbie Carrick, Ann Moore, Patricia Davidson, Han Gendong, Debra Jackson.
This paper reports on the differences between nurses, midwives, allied health professionals (NMAHP) ‘clinical academic roles’ between the United Kingdom, Australia, China, the Nordic Countries and the United States. The paper examines each country and reports on a) the comparative understandings of the concept/context; b) the historical context; c) initiatives and challenges; d) a summary with suggested next steps.
The paper highlights the multitude of benefits of healthcare research activity, including: improved clinical outcomes, improved care quality and safety, increased research income; promotion of the healthcare professional’s role autonomy, empowerment, satisfaction, and recruitment and retention of high-quality staff.
The authors helpfully define some key terminology to aid a common understanding:
- Clinical Academic: a healthcare professional that co-concurrently works within a clinical and academic environment. Activities alongside clinical practice may incorporate education and/or research. This paper concentrates on the research-focused clinical academic.
- Career pathway: a group of occupations within a career cluster which have shared or common skills, knowledge and interests. For the purposes of the journal, the authors suggest that the career pathway includes embedding the role, post objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Training pathway: the route or path that one takes to learn the required learning and skills to do a particular job or activity
- Research-focused clinical academic ‘core skills’: developing a good research question and appropriate methodologies, undertaking research activity to answer the question, dissemination of research findings, leadership skills, and progressive clinical expertise.
It becomes clear throughout the paper that there is much variation between countries in the pursuit and development of NMAHP research-focused clinical academic roles. Of interest, the paper ear marks the historical journey of the development of the clinical academic role in healthcare and NMAHP research capability and capacity.
There is evidence of initiatives in place, however gaps and barriers still remain. The paper makes the argument that the UK in particular has reached a “tipping point” of sustained progress to increase NMAHP research capacity and capability through clinical academic roles. The selected examples demonstrate a wide range of factors and approaches that have generated successful outcomes, including: Board engagement, NMAHP consultant roles, attainment of Masters qualification, support for doctoral study, service improvement projects using research methodology, and evidence-based projects, and even evidence of NMAHP senior research lead roles.
Outside of the UK, the term ‘clinical academic’ is less well understood. In Australia and the United States there are clinical academic or clinical professor roles at a senior level, however the training pathway and opportunities are ill-defined particularly for the novice. Within the Nordic Countries and China, the pace of change is slow due to other priorities in practice development such as change and innovation.
The development of clinical academic roles is clearly one mechanism to increase research capacity and capability within healthcare. Embedding and valuing the research-focused clinical academic role in an authentic and meaningful way is critical to further develop and sustain NMAHP-led research activity within the healthcare clinical setting. Research training requires learning objectives, appropriate teaching/learning and assessment. In contrast however, the development of a career pathway is more complex and subjective, where the definition of ‘success’ and ‘research-activity’ is yet to be collectively defined.
Questions to structure our discussions:
This paper suggests that UK health services have seen a significant recent growth of clinical academic roles; but it may still be perceived that these designated roles are still relatively few and far between. Even where there are no specified roles, there may be increasingly stronger support for a positive research-engaged healthcare workforce: for example, you may be aware of clinical colleagues who are research active, or noticed supportive policy statements in your local AHP Strategy document.
And if you are in a clinical research role yourself, please join our discussions and share your own experiences and insights …
- If you have any ‘clinical academics’ roles (or research-active colleagues) within your clinical team or organisation, what are the key activities or roles are you aware of that they undertake in that role?
- In what ways have you seen research-active clinical roles benefit wider clinical colleagues and services – or hope that this could be achieved?
- If your organisation has recently written or updated their AHP Strategy, what support systems are included for supporting or promoting AHP clinical research training and/or careers?
- What evaluation approaches are you aware of in your local service to measure the impact of increased research capacity in the workforce?