A mixed methods evaluation of a facilitated research career pathway for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists working in the NHS

Eleanor Lutman-White; Nicolas Aldridge; Ceri Jones; Agnieszka Lewko; Jane Coad

doi:10.1186/s12909-025-07982-2

A mixed methods evaluation of a facilitated research career pathway for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists working in the NHS

Eleanor Lutman-White
, Nicolas Aldridge
, Ceri Jones
, Agnieszka Lewko
, Jane Coad

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

1 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Background Opportunities for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists (NMAHP+s) to engage in research are increasing but still lag behind opportunities for medical staff.Iinitiatives to identify, support and develop NMAHP+s considering and pursuing clinical academic roles are key to growing an NMAHP+clinical academic workforce. We describe and evaluate the impact of the Interdisciplinary Clinical Academic health Research Excellence facilitated research career pathway (iCAhRE™ programme) on NMAHP+participants in one National Health Service Trust in England.Methods The study used a mixed methods approach informed by the Kirkpatrick Model of Training/Evaluation. Quantitative data related to uptake, progression through programme stages and key demographics of participants in the programme. Twenty-nine participants participated in a survey which assessed experiences of the programme, learning and impact from the programme, career trajectories, and barriers and enablers to pursuing a clinical academic career. Experiences of the programme were captured in greater depth in 12 interviews.Results Since 2016, participants were able to engage with the programme appropriate to their needs and research careers. Responses to the programme were highly positive and participants had increased their research knowledge and skills, initiated new research-related activities, improved their practice and increased their confidence. A high number had progressed to a role with a higher banding compared to when they started the programme (37.9%) and had research as part of their current role (55.2%). However, significant challenges to pursuing a clinical academic career for NMAHP+s included: unsupportive managers, lack of dedicated time for research engagement in a context of clinical pressures, a lack of clinical academic posts and limited progression opportunities.Conclusions This NHS Trust-supported high-quality facilitated research career pathway has lasting effects, increasing research knowledge and skills, informing and changing participants’ clinical practice, building confidence, increasing research-related activities undertaken and career progression. The programme’s range of opportunities across the whole pathway, the strong collaborative partnership between the NHS Trust and partner Higher Education Institute

Original language	English
Article number	1438
Pages (from-to)	1-17
Number of pages	17
Journal	BMC Medical Education
Volume	25
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-025-07982-2
Publication status	Published - 17 Oct 2025

Bibliographical note

© Crown 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit h t t p : / / c r e a t i v e c o m m o n s . o r g / l i c e n s e s / b y / 4 . 0 /.

Funding

This research was funded by University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust. The funder agreed the research design, provided data requested by ELW and reviewed the manuscript prior to publication.

Funders
University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust

Keywords

Allied health professionals
Clinical academic careers
Midwives
Nurses
Research capacity
Research culture

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Medicine
Education

Access to Document

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Lutman-White et al mixed methods evaluation of iCAhRE author accepted manuscriptAccepted author manuscript, 941 KB
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Cite this

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title = "A mixed methods evaluation of a facilitated research career pathway for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists working in the NHS",

abstract = "Background Opportunities for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists (NMAHP+s) to engage in research are increasing but still lag behind opportunities for medical staff.Iinitiatives to identify, support and develop NMAHP+s considering and pursuing clinical academic roles are key to growing an NMAHP+clinical academic workforce. We describe and evaluate the impact of the Interdisciplinary Clinical Academic health Research Excellence facilitated research career pathway (iCAhRE{\texttrademark} programme) on NMAHP+participants in one National Health Service Trust in England.Methods The study used a mixed methods approach informed by the Kirkpatrick Model of Training/Evaluation. Quantitative data related to uptake, progression through programme stages and key demographics of participants in the programme. Twenty-nine participants participated in a survey which assessed experiences of the programme, learning and impact from the programme, career trajectories, and barriers and enablers to pursuing a clinical academic career. Experiences of the programme were captured in greater depth in 12 interviews.Results Since 2016, participants were able to engage with the programme appropriate to their needs and research careers. Responses to the programme were highly positive and participants had increased their research knowledge and skills, initiated new research-related activities, improved their practice and increased their confidence. A high number had progressed to a role with a higher banding compared to when they started the programme (37.9\%) and had research as part of their current role (55.2\%). However, significant challenges to pursuing a clinical academic career for NMAHP+s included: unsupportive managers, lack of dedicated time for research engagement in a context of clinical pressures, a lack of clinical academic posts and limited progression opportunities.Conclusions This NHS Trust-supported high-quality facilitated research career pathway has lasting effects, increasing research knowledge and skills, informing and changing participants{\textquoteright} clinical practice, building confidence, increasing research-related activities undertaken and career progression. The programme{\textquoteright}s range of opportunities across the whole pathway, the strong collaborative partnership between the NHS Trust and partner Higher Education Institute",

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author = "Eleanor Lutman-White and Nicolas Aldridge and Ceri Jones and Agnieszka Lewko and Jane Coad",

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T1 - A mixed methods evaluation of a facilitated research career pathway for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists working in the NHS

AU - Lutman-White, Eleanor

AU - Aldridge, Nicolas

AU - Jones, Ceri

AU - Lewko, Agnieszka

AU - Coad, Jane

N1 - © Crown 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit h t t p : / / c r e a t i v e c o m m o n s . o r g / l i c e n s e s / b y / 4 . 0 /.

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N2 - Background Opportunities for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists (NMAHP+s) to engage in research are increasing but still lag behind opportunities for medical staff.Iinitiatives to identify, support and develop NMAHP+s considering and pursuing clinical academic roles are key to growing an NMAHP+clinical academic workforce. We describe and evaluate the impact of the Interdisciplinary Clinical Academic health Research Excellence facilitated research career pathway (iCAhRE™ programme) on NMAHP+participants in one National Health Service Trust in England.Methods The study used a mixed methods approach informed by the Kirkpatrick Model of Training/Evaluation. Quantitative data related to uptake, progression through programme stages and key demographics of participants in the programme. Twenty-nine participants participated in a survey which assessed experiences of the programme, learning and impact from the programme, career trajectories, and barriers and enablers to pursuing a clinical academic career. Experiences of the programme were captured in greater depth in 12 interviews.Results Since 2016, participants were able to engage with the programme appropriate to their needs and research careers. Responses to the programme were highly positive and participants had increased their research knowledge and skills, initiated new research-related activities, improved their practice and increased their confidence. A high number had progressed to a role with a higher banding compared to when they started the programme (37.9%) and had research as part of their current role (55.2%). However, significant challenges to pursuing a clinical academic career for NMAHP+s included: unsupportive managers, lack of dedicated time for research engagement in a context of clinical pressures, a lack of clinical academic posts and limited progression opportunities.Conclusions This NHS Trust-supported high-quality facilitated research career pathway has lasting effects, increasing research knowledge and skills, informing and changing participants’ clinical practice, building confidence, increasing research-related activities undertaken and career progression. The programme’s range of opportunities across the whole pathway, the strong collaborative partnership between the NHS Trust and partner Higher Education Institute

AB - Background Opportunities for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists (NMAHP+s) to engage in research are increasing but still lag behind opportunities for medical staff.Iinitiatives to identify, support and develop NMAHP+s considering and pursuing clinical academic roles are key to growing an NMAHP+clinical academic workforce. We describe and evaluate the impact of the Interdisciplinary Clinical Academic health Research Excellence facilitated research career pathway (iCAhRE™ programme) on NMAHP+participants in one National Health Service Trust in England.Methods The study used a mixed methods approach informed by the Kirkpatrick Model of Training/Evaluation. Quantitative data related to uptake, progression through programme stages and key demographics of participants in the programme. Twenty-nine participants participated in a survey which assessed experiences of the programme, learning and impact from the programme, career trajectories, and barriers and enablers to pursuing a clinical academic career. Experiences of the programme were captured in greater depth in 12 interviews.Results Since 2016, participants were able to engage with the programme appropriate to their needs and research careers. Responses to the programme were highly positive and participants had increased their research knowledge and skills, initiated new research-related activities, improved their practice and increased their confidence. A high number had progressed to a role with a higher banding compared to when they started the programme (37.9%) and had research as part of their current role (55.2%). However, significant challenges to pursuing a clinical academic career for NMAHP+s included: unsupportive managers, lack of dedicated time for research engagement in a context of clinical pressures, a lack of clinical academic posts and limited progression opportunities.Conclusions This NHS Trust-supported high-quality facilitated research career pathway has lasting effects, increasing research knowledge and skills, informing and changing participants’ clinical practice, building confidence, increasing research-related activities undertaken and career progression. The programme’s range of opportunities across the whole pathway, the strong collaborative partnership between the NHS Trust and partner Higher Education Institute

KW - Allied health professionals

KW - Clinical academic careers

KW - Midwives

KW - Nurses

KW - Research capacity

KW - Research culture

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SN - 1472-6920

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JO - BMC Medical Education

JF - BMC Medical Education

M1 - 1438

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A mixed methods evaluation of a facilitated research career pathway for nurses, midwives, allied health professionals and healthcare scientists working in the NHS

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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