How the clinical research role at UHD captured our career in the NHS: our lived experience

Authors: Stainer, L. and Pule, P.

Conference: Bournemouth University-University Hospital Dorset Research Event: Collaborative Research - A Time for Action

Abstract:

Collaborative research between academic institutions and healthcare organizations is essential for advancing

health research and improving patient outcomes.

This collaborative world is an arena experienced by both Lucy, as a senior nurse lecturer at BU and a clinical

researcher at UHD, and Pablo, who worked on several medical wards prior to joining the research team as a clinical

researcher, again all at UHD. We will discuss how working in clinical research provides autonomy and excitement,

time with patients, new skills, and creativity, development of new drugs, treatments, care pathways or regimens

for patients, service improvement, high-quality patient care and many more aspects.

Lucy and Pablo joined the research team at UHD in September 2022 and found that their roles as research nurses

fulfilled all these criteria, as well as other aspects: we haven't looked back!

Join us to explore what research can offer you and the world at large by listening to lived experiences, and so

having the opportunity to question us about why we love our work in research.

The authors of this paper identified from the literature - Lai et al. (2017) McLeod et al. (2018), Gagliardi et al.

(2019) and Wijayasinghe et al. (2020) – 4 themes to support collaborative research.

1. Collaboration combines academic and clinical expertise: enables researchers to design studies that are

more relevant to clinical practice and to implement interventions more readily translated into practice.

2. Collaboration improves patient outcomes: provides more effective interventions and treatments.

3. Collaboration strengthens research capacity: provides opportunities for researchers to learn from clinical practice and for clinicians to learn from research, develop new research skills and adopt evidence-based practices in clinical settings. 4. Collaboration enhances the translation of research findings: by involving clinicians in the research process and designing feasible interventions to implement in clinical settings.

Source: Manual