If I reflect back on some AML patients we had, so acute myeloid leukaemia, there was a lot of trials called AML18 that ran all over the country, so I was involved in helping with those. So, I knew a little bit about clinical trials, but knew very little-. There would have been this research nurse that would have come up to the ward, maybe once every other day and taken some notes, had a chat with the patient, and then left again. And we were the one who was putting the drugs up. So I kind of thought the research nurse job was, to be honest, a job that somebody in their late 40s, early 50s, who’s worked a hard career and wants a bit of an easier job, that was my honest perception. Now that I’ve worked in that area, and particularly in the early phase clinical trials, I know that is not the case at all and it actually is quite difficult work.

So motivation initially to go into the role was to get back into cancer care and to have a period of life where I could have nice working hours. Motivations now, having worked in it, is that I get to maintain all my clinical skills. If anything, my clinical skills are enhanced because you have to do the, the next level of intermediate life support because the drugs are so unknown and there is so many risks with them that you need to be fully trained and fully aware of what’s happening clinically, and how to manage that. but equally there isn’t really many night shifts. I have had to do two night shifts though. For some of the drugs where we didn’t get to start the drug until late, and then the series of blood tests that you take run on into the night. So there have been the odd night shift but we can, we can cope with that.

So motivations really to stay in it, is that I like the research side and really I get, I get to be a full-blown cancer nurse and in some respects a specialist cancer nurse.

Well I think it was just a combination of factors, it wasn’t one straightforward answer. So, first of all, I got to that stage-, I loved being clinical. I absolutely love that patient contact, the knowledge that I have clinically, however because of some health issues, I found it more difficult to deal with shift works, work and perhaps even with the manual handling side of the, the job.

And it came an opportunity when one of the surgeons I were working, I was working f-, with had an opening for a research nurse and I was very intrigued because where I’m coming from it was no-, there is still no such thing as a research nurse and I was like oh this sounds quite interesting’, because I always felt I’m-, I mean I have an inquisitive nature so I’m curious about things and I like to learn. And I thought this might be something. And I took it from there. I applied for the job, I got the job and I actually liked it [laughs].

But I’ve always liked the sort of academic side of things and you know learning more and sort of stretching my limited brain to do sort of a little bit, and I’ve always been a questioner, always. Since I was a child I, you know I always, like why? Why are we doing it this way? Why don’t we do it that way? And I think research, I, to be honest with you I didn’t realise for a long time that you could actually work in research. It didn’t feel like it was something that was available to me. You know you think research is all about people in white coats in labs, and that just, you know I was never particularly into science at school, never thought of myself as a scientist. Before I trained as a physio, I was a musician, I did a music degree. So, you know the, the concept of research as I know it now, no idea that that was out there and available to me as a physio.

And when I found out that it was I couldn’t think of why, you know, anywhere else that I’d rather be really. It really, I mean aside from practically it ticks a lot of boxes, I just, I love the fact that I, every day is different, I like the variety, I like the fact that I work within a, a team of people that are in a way just like me questioning, you know striving to get the best, information, treatment, whatever we’re doing. We all seem to have the same goals. It’s great, I love it.

And never thought I would do-, move into research at all. It didn’t occur to me for a long time. But then gradually I was ready for a change, I’d done the clinical side for a long time, was looking for something new. And then by accident had kind of fallen into doing a bit of work for a nursing journal, which-. So I wrote a CPD article on pre-eclampsia. And as a result of that, that sort of got me a bit more interested in it. Because I was looking at a lot of research and that. And just thinking about things from a different perspective. And I think around the same time I was wanting to make a change career-wise, but wasn’t quite sure what. And then – but had been talking to some of the research midwives at work and it all just kind of- it’s a bit incremental. It’s one of those things, one thing leads to another. And then saw the advertisement for this job on blood pressure self-monitoring and it just seemed sort of the perfect fit with my experience and interests and background. So, that’s how I made the move.

I had been a ward-based nurse and was getting to a point where I was feeling a bit frustrated within that role. And within nursing, really. And I didn’t know whether it was the role, or whether it was me and nursing and I’d come to the end of the line with it. And was considering leaving altogether. But my love, my passion, has always been [laugh] for nursing and healthcare and making things better for patients really. So I’d met a friend who worked in research. She was a clinical trials assistant. And who knew me personally, not sort of professionally, but knew me personally. And said, I think research would be really-, you’d really enjoy it. And I sort of thought, I hadn’t really thought about it. And so then I did a bit of research about what research nursing was about. I’d always felt that it was too academic for me, that I wasn’t sort of in that sphere of academia, cos I never did a degree, and I’d been very much a hands-on nurse. So I didn’t know whether or not it’d be, I’d be able to understand it, or facilitate it and be good at it really. And then I met up with the lead research nurse at where I’m working now and I thought ‘yeah, I think I could give it a go. And I didn’t think I would have anything to lose, because if I was going to leave, at least I’d tried to regenerate my enthusiasm for the healthcare system.

So, that was really- it was more a case of it sort of found me really through a friend. And then I had to sort of find out what it was about, because I had no real idea. Cos it wasn’t anything I had really looked into it before.

So, having spent quite a long time in that acute area as a nurse, I found that – I wouldn’t say I’d achieved everything I wanted to achieve, but I found I didn’t feel I could go any further. And I didn’t feel I could make a difference, staying where I was. So I felt it was time for a new challenge. And I looked at a few different areas. I looked at sort of critical care outreach nursing, which is sort of like responding to acutely ill patients. I looked at sort of a training type role, so resuscitation training. And I looked at research. And I looked at those three areas. And research was the

I felt sometimes standards of care were not, not reaching ideal. Sometimes it was quite substandard. And it was hard fighting against, fighting against the system really, to get what you wanted, to get what’s best for your patients. You know, to- To sort of stand up and say ‘I want this, I want this, these patients deserve this’, and be pretty much told ‘we haven’t got resources to deliver it that way’, you know, ‘your ideal isn’t realistic.

And after sort of a long time of finding yourself uncomfortably struggling through that, you kind of think ‘well, I can’t make a difference, maybe it’s someone else’s opportunity to get on and have a go – maybe my way isn’t, isn’t the way to do it, so have a look at making a difference in a different way.

And when I did my midwifery degree because by that point that’s, midwifery was a degree subject, we did a dissertation for that and I can remember at that point doing a, the reflective essay at the end kind of going I know I’m gonna do, you know, one day I’m gonna do something with my, you know, my own I’m gonna do this research into XYZ. And I’d written a couple, again I sort of started doing wrote a couple of papers and things when I was in midwifery practice and kind of thought oh this is great this is what I want to do which was kind of why I went for that research job, that wasn’t the only reason though to be honest.

So [laugh] one of the, so the research job seemed a really brilliant idea, attractive because of what it was as in doing research in a kind of nebulous way but frankly one of the reasons to do it was to get out of shift work as a midwife which, and I’m in my early fifties now so this was, I was probably early forties I don’t mean it’s just age but it’s certainly-. I did midwifery kind of clinically for about not that long maybe five or six years I guess really by the end and it’s just exhausting and yeah a really, really, really, really hard job and I had children growing up and things like that and I think one of the reasons I wanted to move was to get out of that environment. But it’s not just the kind of physical tiredness about it I think it’s just a really difficult job I completely [laughs] hats off for admiration to anybody who can carry on doing it but it’s so hard. So that was another reason really was to kind of find something to do that wasn’t that shift work, endless repetitive exhausting terrifying work it was doing something else. So I’d love to be able to say it’s all nobly wanting to do research but that wasn’t really the only reason.

What led you to do a Masters?

Well, I suppose it begins before that because really I think it was always programmed to work in research or change. So, the whole drive for me to become a midwife was to contribute to the improvement of women’s health globally, which sounds lofty and whatever, a huge sort of task. But my way of doing that was through becoming a midwife because I wanted to have a practical skill, but it wouldn’t end there for me. Before being a midwife I’d done a history degree and I was always interested in contributing some improvement globally.

So, I wanted to match that sort of ideological pursuit with having a hands-on skill, and midwifery’s the window through which I’ve done that.

So, it was always sort of a presumption that I would go into midwifery and want to take part at another level.

So in midwifery, only in the last year, when we had a dissertation, and in fact it was introduced horribly. In fact, I remember the lecturer at the time said, she was just like, “I’ve picked this short straw and I’m going to have to teach you guys research.” She goes, “I hate it and you’re going to hate, but we just have to do it.” And I hated it. Once she said that I was just like ‘oh, my gosh,’ and I was never really one-, very good at like sitting and listening and staying awake, that was my problem. But as time went on I just thought ‘well, I’m just going to have to do it anyway,’ and then I thought ‘I’m just going to pick a really easy subject,’ so I-, easy to what I thought to myself, which was hands-on or hands-off the perineum. And then as I began to read the research and as you’re writing the rationale like why you’re doing the dissertation-, why you’re doing the study, it becomes so-, it became very personal and very relevant, so I was just like ‘oh, my gosh. So I then grew an interest in it and I always knew that I was going to do some-, I didn’t know what in research, but I was just like ‘I want to do something like this again, whether it’s to write a journal-,’ I thought at the time.

Yes, so I was, I was coming up to qualifying, so yeah in the summer of my third year.

And again, even at that stage I knew that I wanted to do research. So, I think maybe I was very receptive to it, so I really enjoyed it. I think it’s a little bit like marmite though cos I’ve seen that with, with some students that come through now, they either really like it, or they absolutely hate it. I think a lot; some people think they don’t know why they’re there. They don’t really see the point, you know, of doing that. Whereas others they, we had some nice feedback of, some students, saying I never realised that this was a career option, but I’ve, I’m really, really keen to follow this now. So I really enjoyed it, and I, I enjoyed shadowing them, and I enjoyed going around different areas of the hospital and as a newly qualified midwife as I was, so I got a job in [hospital name] but I also did an application for a research midwifery role as a newly qualified midwife, I think slightly naively, cos I thought I really want to do it, and it came up so I thought I might as well apply. And I got an interview, and they said, Oh we really like you, and we like your enthusiasm, but I think you’d better go and do your first year of midwifery first and then, and then try and look into a research role. So, it’s, it’s something, every step of the way that I’ve been looking at.

I’ve been in the job for six years now before that I was a sister on MAU and I was looking for a bit of a change and a friend of mine was a research nurse who worked in the cancer team and so I asked her about her role and when she told me all about it I just thought ‘well that sounds quite interesting, I would quite like to find out a bit more about that.

Well you see she, I always knew what she did but I was like well can you exactly tell me what on a day to day because I can’t quite understand what you do. And so that’s exactly what she did and she, I said just explained what a typical day is and then I’ll know where you are. And so she told me you know, that they run certain trials looking at different things running treatments, you know, different treatments against standard care and then measuring outcomes and all that kind and I thought oh that sounds, you know, interesting, worthwhile. So maybe it’s something that I could get involved in.

So the motivation for research initially, so this is really I guess right back in 2000, 2001, was that I’d actually done research as an undergraduate student, so back in, I graduated in 1997, and my, I did a, I was on the, one of the intakes on a degree programme and it was quite new. And we actually had to carry out an undergraduate research project, and I loved it. I really enjoyed it, partly helped because my big focus of interest at the time was cystic fibrosis, and I did a project involved with children and young people with cystic fibrosis, I worked with the CF team here at the hospital and I really enjoyed it. So I always knew that I had an interest in it and I think that’s one of the things that’s perhaps gone from the undergraduate programme, is that opportunity to be involved in research.

And then so when there was an opportunity in 2000, 2001 I took on an audit role initially and again, the-, I know obviously audit is very different to research but the principles about the following a process, examining what you do, looking for improvements I think those principles do cross over, and so actually that kind of led to that interest. And then I got the opportunity to do data collection for a big study, and it really was data collection, but I really enjoyed it because I like-, I think like a lot of research nurses, we like detail, we like a systematic approach, we like to be able to tick things off lists. It’s a very structured approach to things, and that really appealed to me. So then obviously then I had a period of time where I wasn’t doing research, and, but the idea of getting back into that was quite appealing.

I think it makes you, I mean certainly for me it made me proud to work there because I think that if you’re a, if you’re a big Trust and you’re participating in clinical trials and I think you know that you’re working somewhere quite good. It felt to me that I was working somewhere more distinguished, and more prestigious. That we’d been chosen to roll out a clinical trial. And it’s nice to be in that environment cos you feel like you’re cutting edge. Like when I worked in [City] we never had any of this, like I’d honestly never seen any research and at [Hospital] there was so many trials going on at the one time that it was hard to keep up what, what the criteria was for each trial when you got a new patient in. So, it felt really cutting edge and that we were providing great care.

I’m really lucky because I’m in a department that’s really, that’s got a huge focus on research, and my, the educational lead he wants everybody to be educated to Master’s level, so he is really pro any opportunity that comes up for nurses to have an opportunity to study at Master’s and PhD level. So, for me there’s been huge amounts of support to support my roster around it, and also because he has done a PhD himself it’s actually quite good to have that, to talk about my research proposal in practical terms.

And then it was really in the sort of late 80’s, early 90’s I had a very supportive manager, who actually supported me to do my Masters. And again, really, we see a lot more people doing that now, but we didn’t really see that so much for what I would call a job in radiographer back in the 90’s doing that. So, I was fortunate. And that was a Master’s in social research because you couldn’t really find, very easily, Master’s courses that were specifically radiography. I think that was a good thing because I actually, being a therapeutic radiographer a lot of what you do is actually with patient experience etcetera, and so right from that very early time I was very much a qualitative researcher. So very much liked interviewing patients, doing sort of grounded theory work, finding out that sort of lived experiences of patients.

And particularly head and neck cancer at that time. So, then I finished that Master’s, and I was still in quite a junior role at that time actually, and again this very forward-thinking manager said to me, Well what are you going to do with this? And I really wasn’t sure, I guess I think Abi, up until that point, I, I really didn’t even think I was capable of doing a Master’s, cos you know it wasn’t encouraged really that we would. and she said, suddenly said to me, Well I think we could make you our research radiographer, and I sort of said to her, Well what is one of those? And she said to me back, I don’t know, but, but we’ll make it up as we go along, and that’s what we did really. That role wasn’t really there across the UK before, so it was, it was quite a brave move on her part. And what she allowed me to do was do true research from inception to publication, which again was quite rare. So I mean I’m really thankful for her, for giving me those opportunities. An amazing person really to have that foresight.

And then yes so, every clinical job I’ve been in since there’s always something you’re doing where you’re thinking well, why do we do this?’ Or why is it these patients do that? or, you know, I’ve got a fairly low boredom threshold and I don’t mind hard work and, you know, in the early days you just got on and did it, and you didn’t really need to ask too much permission, I mean most of my, my line managers were, as long as you were doing the job you were paid to do they were quite happy to tolerate you doing this on the side so to speak.

I’ve had people who’ve been supportive just in that almost they’ve turned a blind eye and let me do it, and haven’t interfered, and that is great support, cos the worst thing you need is somebody who’s going to be constantly trying to put you back in your box. So, I’ve been, I had, you know, my early career, several physiotherapy managers who, they knew I was doing this sort of thing, but they didn’t do anything to stop you. I wouldn’t say they did anything particularly to encourage me, but they let you get on and do it, as long as you were doing the rest of your job as well.