Abstract
BackgroundResearch nurses, midwives and allied health professionals are members of an important emergent profession delivering clinical research and, in the United Kingdom, have been the focus of considerable investment by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). This paper considers the experiences of research nurses, midwives and allied health professionals in relation to professional identity work, recognizing these are coproduced alongside others that they interact with (including patients, clinical staff and other research staff).MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 45 nurses, midwives and allied health professionals in the UK about their experiences of working in research delivery. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically coded and analysed.ResultsOur analysis highlights how research nurses, midwives and allied health professionals adjust to new roles, shift their professional identities and undertake identity work using uniforms, name badges and job titles as they negotiate complex identities.ConclusionsResearch nurses, midwives and allied health professionals experience considerable challenges as they enter and transition to a research delivery role, with implications for their sense of professional identities. A change in the work that they undertake and how they are (or perceive they are) viewed by others (including clinical non-research colleagues and patients) has implications for their sense of professional and individual identity. The tensions involved extend to their views on symbols of professional identity, such as uniforms, and as they seek to articulate and demonstrate the value of their conjoined role in research and as a healthcare professional, within the unfolding landscape of health research. We embed our study findings in the context of the newly emerging clinical research practitioner workforce, which further exacerbates and complicates the role and identity complexity for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals in research delivery.
Highlights
Recent growth in clinical research activity—in the United Kingdom through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)—has generated the new professional roles of research nurses, midwives and allied health professionals (R-NMAHPs) who play an important role in delivering clinical research [9]
We explore how Research nurse (R-NMAHP) themselves navigate and articulate tensions in relation to their professional identities, how conceptualizations are influenced by others they interact with, and the work involved in forming and maintaining new professional identities
We suggest that because boundary spanning is embedded in the remit of the “research delivery” role, it could be embraced by R-NMAHPs as an asset in their articulations of professional identity, but note that instead it tends to underpin concerns about not being a “proper” NMAHP, nor researcher
Summary
Midwives and allied health professionals are members of an important emergent profession delivering clinical research and, in the United Kingdom, have been the focus of considerable investment by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). This paper considers the experiences of research nurses, midwives and allied health professionals in relation to professional identity work, recognizing these are coproduced alongside others that they interact with (including patients, clinical staff and other research staff ). Research midwives are sometimes grouped alongside research nurses, whilst there has been relatively little published literature on the experiences of research AHPs. R-NMAHP roles typically focus on “delivering research”, including activities such as participant recruitment (for example, identifying and approaching eligible patients, taking consent), data collection (for example, collecting patient data and biological samples), delivering interventions, and data entry and management, there is considerable diversity across sites, teams and studies
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