Developing and supporting clinical academic research careers for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals: the UK experience.

INTRODUCTION Internationally the need for the development of clinical academic careers for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals is becoming ever more apparent. Clinical academics maintain their clinical practice whilst also carrying out research, placing them in a unique position to make connections between the two fields. Integrated academic training pathways have been introduced across the UK since 2006 to combine clinical training with research experience; however, aspiring clinical academics still face a range of challenges in balancing the clinical and research aspects of their careers and there is a lack of evidence to demonstrate impact of clinical academic career pathways, post initial training. AIM This research aimed to follow up scholars from a Pre-Masters and Pre-PhD Clinical Academic Training Programme delivered since 2013, to investigate the extent to which their training has been implemented in clinical practice and to explore the extent to which the training enabled them to move on to develop and support subsequent research activity in the clinical setting. MATERIALS/METHODS This qualitative study followed up participants (including those who did not successfully complete) from the Health Education England: East Midlands funded Clinical Academic Careers training programme, delivered at Lincoln from 2013-2017. All previous scholars were contacted and invited to take part in an individual interview. Data were collected from May to July 2017. Ethical approval was granted by the host Higher Education Institution. 18 in-depth interviews were conducted, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. RESULTS The results of the study will be presented at the conference. Key barriers and facilitators to accessing and sustaining, both initial research training and on-going implementation have been identified. DISCUSSION This research highlights the importance of clinical academic training programmes in developing and supporting an environment conducing to research in the clinical healthcare setting. CONCLUSION There is a need for on-going work to support both clinical academic scholars and also manages working in the healthcare setting, to overcome some of the practical and financial barriers to the development of clinical academics.