Career pathways for nurses interested in research

1
Career pathways for nurses interested in research

• Roger Watson
• University of Sheffield

2
Should nurses have research career pathways?

• general ignorance about nursing research inside
  and outside the profession
• the way nurse education is funded would suggest
  that nurses should not have career pathways
• yet the DoH promote RDA and PDA for nurses and
  AHPs
• there is an enormous gap between pre-registration
  nurse education and the desire of/for nurses to
  have research careers

3
What is a research career pathways?

• no single model
• where does a nurse interested in research start?
• where does as nurse interested in research end
  up?
• do research active nurses need to be clinically
  credible?
• what hope do any of us have when involvement in
  research by clinical nurses is considered by some
  to be 'skiving'?

4
Nurses interested in research need to be
realistic about it

• why do they want a research career?
• what do they think a research career will be
  like?
• most will have to become academics
• most will do a great deal of the research in
  their own time
• it's hard work and nobody is going to give you
  enough time to do it

5
What would a good career pathway in research look
like?

• student nurse (diploma/degree)
• staff nurse (degree/higher degree/PhD)
• clinical research career or academic research
  career?
• Agenda for Change must have made academic
  research careers much less attractive!

6
Some radical thinking is required

• we must start encouraging promising students to
  do research degrees as early as possible
• there should be more opportunities for nursing
  students to undertake PhD study prior to a
  clinical career
• we must encourage research active nurses to
  remain in or return to clinical practice
• we must re-think what we mean by clinical
  credibility

7
Information and advice

• StLaR HR Plan (DH DfES)
• Making choices facing challenges (NHS Education
  for Scotland www.nes.scot.nhs.uk)
• Career pathways for research nurses (RCN
  www.man.ac.uk/rcn/rs/career.htm)
• forthcoming report on doctors research careers
  to be folowed by one on nurses research careers
  (chaired by Janet Finch)

8
Final word to Tony Butterworth (2005)

• Mission impossible? Nursing Management 127,
  26-29.
• we should institute a 'modernising nursing
  careers' review without delay.
• we must stop inventing new roles for nurses
  without proper consultation with the profession
  and employers

9
Final word to Tony Butterworth (2005)

• we need to develop a career map that allows
  nurses to transfer more easily between services
  and education...stop making education a 'last
  chance career'

10
Final word to Tony Butterworth (2005)

• we should provide a platform for health services
  research and the clever, inventive work that is
  already led by nurse researchers.
• we have to drive out the anti-academics in our
  profession.