Claire is a lead research nurse working in intensive care. She started in her first research nursing post eight years ago and has worked at a number of Trusts during this time. Three years ago, she was promoted to have a managerial component to her role. Claire continues to be involved in research delivery and leads various academic projects of her own, including those at a national scale. She is a Principle Investigator/Chief Investigator on a number of studies. At her hospital, Claire has responsibility for overseeing all research undertaken by the team as well as research education of staff. Her role also includes encouraging research activity amongst staff and raising awareness about the importance of research. This includes fostering a positive research culture within the hospital setting amongst all staff and challenging notions that research nursing is not proper nursing. Claire has also been involved in patient and public outreach activities, including visiting schools and representing health research activity at local festivals.

Before starting in research, Claire had worked as a critical care nurse for three years. However, following diagnosis of a chronic health condition, she needed to reconsider the physical activities involved in nursing sedated patients. She was keen to stay within critical care and came across a research nurse post being advertised. Claire took the job which was fixed-term for one year. She initially saw the short-term post as a good opportunity to see if research nursing was for her. However, the contract uncertainty became a concern although the jobs would usually roll-over to the following year, the arrangement was a nightmare for mortgages. Since being in her senior post, Claire has worked to improve this situation for staff in her hospital because research work is always available, new staff are appointed on two year fixed-term contracts then made substantive [after the first two years].

When Claire initially started her first research nurse job, she had little training and supervision. There was another research nurse who showed her how to do some activities and the majority of my learning was on the job. For study-specific tasks, she learnt through study monitors. Across her experiences, Claire describes working with research teams who are incredibly productive, supportive, cohesive and without issues around hierarchy. However, she recalls one job where she felt quite lonely as it was very much me working solo and calling on a medical PI as and when I required signatures or other tasks doing. Claire is pleased that more recently employed research nurses that she’s spoken to have had much more support in their posts: they were reporting all sorts of supervision, teaching, training and buddy systems. New research nurses starting in Claire’s hospital undergo a training package which she has designed. Claire also sits on a steering group for research training programmes, and this includes courses for those research nurses who have been in post for some time but never received any formal training.

The intensive care studies that Claire works on and oversees include phase II, III and IV trials. She has also been involved in research studies in other clinical areas too, including paediatrics. As well as managerial aspects, her current role includes: checking feasibility of potential studies at her site, recruitment of participants, data collection and management, data analysis, and disseminating study findings. Although patient contact has reduced as Claire has become more senior, she feels it is the best part of her job. Claire finds that you build a rapport with patients and families in a way which wasn’t possible on wards or in other departments. She explains that contact in research tends to be more one-to-one, prolonged over several months or even years, and there is scope to spend more time with each person. Across her experience, Claire has come across a number of studies which have been challenging to carry out. She thinks tensions between research design and practice often occur in studies which have not included both a patient and a research nurse on the design panel.

Claire thinks there is a lot of confusion between the role of research nurses and nurse researchers, and this was something she struggled with initially too. She had expected to be conducting some research of her own when she first started as a research nurse; although Claire did eventually do so, she wasn’t aware at the time that this was unusual. She sought out opportunities including scholarships to undertake research methods training, a Master’s degree and an intensive care specialist course. Claire thinks the confusion about nurses in research is further confounded by there being many associated job titles. Claire gave examples across various bands some with similar wording, not all job titles specifying nurse’, and not all requiring the post-holder to be a nurse. She feels it is a big problem: It is difficult enough to demonstrate what we do, to raise our profile and show our worth having a multitude of titles does not show how valued the research nurse role really is. Without evidence demonstrating the value of research nurses, Claire fears that these jobs will be (and are being) swapped for lower levels, grades and those without professional qualification.

For Claire, a key strength of research nurses is that they have incredible skills and knowledge of both research and patient pathways in a way which others may not. She thinks good research nurses have many skills, including advanced communication, diplomacy, and abilities to adapt and multi-task. She encourages student nurses to seek out a research team placement. For clinical nurses interested in moving to a research role, she advises them to contact the research nurse team and look into opportunities for shadowing.