I benefitted from the NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research fellowship and that’s a fellowship
that offers funding to nurses, midwives and allied health professionals to do a PHD, and
the wonderful thing about that source of funding is that it allows you to your PHD within a
clinical setting.
The NIHR funding I received enabled me to complete an MA in research methods at the
University of Nottingham.
As a result I’ve managed to secure a further three years funding from the Medical Research
Council, which once I’ve completed will enable me to register for a Doctor of philosophy
in nursing.
I was able to get a full fellowship funding programme and within that I’m doing a full-time
fellowship over three years so my full salary is covered for a three year period.
I also was given research costs so that includes for example any consumables, any travelling
expenses, anything like that.
And also my salary is back filled so that managed to back fill my role within the trust
that I work with and the University.
Doing research has allowed me to be very innovative with my clinical practice too.
My research involves looking at swallowing and patients that have had a laryngectomy;
they have had their larynx removed, usually because of cancer.
And I have been able to look at a new swallowing tool with this patient population.
Now we have used that swallowing tool with other patients that have had swallowing difficulties
but never with laryngectomy, so that’s been very stimulating for me to try something new
with the patient group that I work with.
Clinical academic training has given me a fantastic opportunity to build on many of
the clinical skills I already have as a clinical nurse.
Most importantly the training has given me a skill set that has enabled me to not only
identify research questions but consider a variety of methods for answering those questions.
This means that potentially the research I’m conducting can now be disseminated at conferences
and in journals nationally.
I think that the research from the clinical academic trainees does benefit patients and
it does benefit healthcare professionals, for example, part of my research is looking
at how GP’s can help to manage patients with inflammatory bowel disease in primary
care.
And we are already making steps in that that I’m going to be in a position to go out
to the GP’s and start to look at their knowledge base and how we can train the GP’s to manage
the patients with inflammatory bowel disease.
But what I’ve found, because my research is based in a clinical setting I’m not in
a remote research lab somewhere.
I’m interacting with patients all the time and so patients have been involved in my research
are not just subjects in the research, but they’ve also been involved in focus groups
and through that have given me a lot of insights into some of the problems they experience
and the impact and laryngectomies and surgery on quality of life.
I would recommend my colleagues to apply for one of these clinical academic training awards.
It’s been an absolutely fabulous opportunity for me.
It’s raised my profile, it’s opened so many doors and it’s going to have a direct
impact on patient care.
Clinical academic training is an excellent opportunity for any nurse or allied healthcare
professional to make a real difference to patient care.
Their training allows a professional to build upon the clinical skills they already have
to conduct high quality research which has the potential to have a positive impact on
patient care nationally.