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Understanding success in research capacity building
Background
A research-active healthcare workforce is linked to better patient care, improved staff retention, and the development of new clinical practices. In the UK, research is also seen as important for the economy and for managing the health challenges associated with an aging population. For these reasons, getting involved in research is considered to be a key goal for NHS staff.
However, there are barriers that make getting involved in research difficult, especially a lack of time, resources, knowledge, and coordination. Nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals are the largest staff group in the NHS workforce – but they are far less active in research than doctors.
To change this, many organisations now offer research capacity building (RCB) activities, such as training courses, webinars, fellowships, and structured career pathways. These activities attempt to address the known barriers to research involvement, but what best practice looks like in RCB hasn’t been defined. As a result, these activities can be difficult to understand, their benefits aren’t always clear, and they are rarely evaluated to see how effective they are. This leads to wasted effort and poor outcomes. As there’s no clear agreement about what counts as success in RCB, it may mean something different to funders, trainers, frontline staff, and managers, depending on their priorities. To truly understand what makes RCB effective, we need to look at success criteria from a wide range of perspectives and not just published research. Because RCB is fragmented and varies across organisations, grey literature (like reports and policy documents) may also hold valuable insights. A flexible, broad approach is needed to piece together the current picture.
Approach
This project aims to contribute to the practice of RCB by developing an understanding of what success looks like in this area through:
- a scoping review which aims to answer the question “How is success currently conceptualised in research capacity building in nurses, midwives and allied health professionals in the UK?.”
- a modified Delphi process (a research method used to get a group of experts to agree on one answer to a complex question.)
- mixed methods evaluations of existing activities to understand what has made them successful or otherwise.
By understanding what success is in RCB, and learning from existing initiatives, we will be better able to plan successful programmes in the future.
Funding and ethics
This study is funded by the Health Foundation’s grant to The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute). It is led by THIS Institute and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.