Review: The challenges facing healthcare lecturers and professors to lead and promote a research-based culture for practice

Abstract

The impetus to renew the work and focus of nurses, midwives and health visitors involved in research is growing in strength. In 2007 the United Kingdom Clinical Research Collaboration offered a structure to the profession that made a progressive career from graduate to postdoctoral researcher a real possibility (UKCRC, 2007). The problems that characterised these careers were well known. My research team, who conducted the work that led to this final report, extensively described the competing dilemmas of teaching, research and clinical practice (Butterworth et al., 2005). This paper describes a qualitative study to explore the role of academic staff in influencing research careers. The authors describe the small numbers of academic staff who have significant experience and necessary qualifications in research. It is therefore likely for some academic staff that their patterns of influence will be based on a more limited experience. This is a sadly familiar picture as the education of the professions has moved into the university sector. All too often, academic subjects in life and behavioural sciences (the necessary academic subjects that underpin professional preparation) are offered by nurse educators who hold no formal qualification in those subjects. The same is true for research. ‘Research lectures’ are often undertaken by staff without practical research experience, and the student experience must be all the less because of this. The findings from this paper offer some new insights into how research is experienced, taught and delivered by academic staff, but sadly the solutions have so far been neither inspiring nor radical. To make a more purposeful shift the changes may need to be more painful. This paper suggests that the appointment of clinical chairs and joint appointments may be useful; however, this idea has been interminably slow in gathering momentum. The purposeful commissioning of an education workforce that is significantly composed of joint appointments and clinician/researchers could be achieved in several pilot sites in the UK, were education commissioners sufficiently brave. This would allow staff to be clinically relevant and experienced as well as research active. A model already exists: it is how most undergraduate medical education is delivered currently. Corresponding author: Tony Butterworth, University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln, LN6 7TS. E-mail: tbutterworth@lincoln.ac.uk Downloaded from jrn.sagepub.com at University of Lincoln on December 16, 2013