I would just say-, I mean it is-, I think it’s a really, really interesting job, and I just think there’s lots and lots of opportunities out there. What I would say is come and sort of see what it’s all about. I would say come and, come and sort of speak to research nurses, and see if you can come and, and sort of spend a day working in research and see if it is the sort of thing that you want to do. But it’s, for me, I think one of the things that I really like about it is the variety, because you, no day, no two days are ever the same. And, you know, you get an opportunity to try some different things, so there’s, there’s a lot of liaison with sort of the R&D department but then you’ve got the patient contact, you’ve got sort of even just doing the labs, so sort of seeing the patient right through from start to finish, I think is, is the thing that I really like about it. And you do build up relationships with the patients over, over time. You know, sometimes you’ve got a patient coming in for a year and you really have the time to spend with that person. And, you know, I’ve got a couple of patients that have taken part in research three or four years ago that I’m in still in touch with now. Because we, we’ve sort of built up that relationship and we, you know, and they’ve perhaps come back for a couple of different studies and then they’ve got involved in some Patient and Public Involvement stuff with us as well, so I still see them from time to time at things and, you know, and I think that’s, that’s one of the things I really like about it.

You do work really very independently in research, so, usually have a PI [Principal Investigator] for the study, a Principal Investigator, so but often that Principal Investigator is a clinician, so particularly in, where I work, I mean [cough] the Principal Investigators there, they’re consultants, they’re out you know busy in the clinical area. So really, I would say we kind of pretty much, as nurses, pretty much coordinate and run the studies. So you do have to be able to work very much, you know, take on board a lot of the responsibility. Obviously they’ve got the overall responsibility and you have to, again you have to be able to pick out what are the things, you know, you have to make sure you’re constantly communicating with them to feed everything back, and make sure they’re kind of aware of what’s going on the study and if there’s any issues with patients, then they’re aware of it. But actually, you are making a lot of the decisions. And actually there are a couple, well one study where I’m the PI myself. And I think that’s happening a lot more now, that nurses are becoming PI’s for more studies. So again on that study, you know, it is just me, I’m kind of the person that’s in charge of it, and obviously I’ve got people on my team working on it.

Yeah so well because previous to this I was working on evenings in district nursing, so I was doing six till, six till midnight, but only two evenings a week. So, I did one day, cos I was managing that team, I did two evenings but then I also did one day, I sort of had an admin day during the day. So yeah, it was, it was quite a change. So, then I went from that to, and then when I first started on the research I did, I only did 18 hours, so I managed to fit that, more or less, around school hours. But then of course, because I’d always worked evenings, I’d never had to worry about school holidays before for my children because they, you know, I’d always been working in the evenings. So of course, then I was working in the day, then I had that sort of in the holidays to manage. But I mean now my children are old enough I don’t have to worry about things, you know, they’re still at home but they’re older so [laughs] so I don’t have to worry. But yeah, but in some ways it’s nice working, one of the things that was particularly nice was when I worked evenings, you know, we still had to cover all the sort of bank holidays and Christmas, and all that sort of thing. And I have to say it was very nice when I, and I still appreciate it every Christmas when I don’t have to work Christmas in this job [laughs]. And I have to say that is a big treat to know that I can have Christmas off every year with my children.

Cos I think, I think it’s changing the mind set a bit about research, cos I think people sort of think oh research is something that, I don’t know, using people as guinea pigs or whatever, and there’s nothing in it for the patient. But we’ve since had a few studies where there is something, a lot more in it for the patient, in that one of the studies we do we’re giving the patients an opportunity to try a continuous glucose monitoring system that they wear on their arm. Which means that they don’t need to finger prick so much to test their blood glucose. And so, and it’s a device that’s available on the market to buy, but it’s, you know, relatively expensive and not everyone can afford to buy it, and it’s not at the moment available on the NHS. So we were able to, we were getting quite a lot of people onto this study, so we were asking the diabetes nurses to refer people. And so, I think they began to see that actually this is a study which is really nice for the patients, they’re getting to try something that’s really helping them, you know, for a couple of weeks, and it can, you know, really help with their diabetes, and all the rest of it.

And there’s also a lab skills course, which again there wasn’t when I first started. And one of the things I do in my job is we do all our own-, we don’t have any lab people, so when we get the samples we do all our own centrifuging and pipetting of plasma and what have you. And I’d never done that before, so again someone just showed me how to do it. And then I think I’ve since discovered a couple of things I’ve been doing wrong for, [laugh] for five years, you know. Because you don’t, if someone just shows you, it just gets passed down the line and, you know. So once people started going on the lab skills course, they were able to feedback and say, Well, you know, we should have been doing this for the last however long.

So yeah, so I think it’s a lot better, and I think there is a lot more now. And the workforce development team have kind of constantly trying to, you know, find out from research nurses what it is they need to know and trying to sort of add more things into, into that training. So yeah, so as I say when I first started no, there wasn’t very much, but it definitely has improved a lot since then.

There is quite a lot of pressure to get patients into studies. I mean obviously, if you kind of decide on a target at the beginning, I mean I think just personally you quite like to do what you said you’re gonna do, so that’s one thing. But you do get, I mean there is a certain amount of pressure to meet those targets anyway. I think we, I would say mostly when we get patients on studies in [City] we do generally keep them on the study, we do have quite a good record of sort of, once people are on it, they stay on it. But then we do sometimes struggle to recruit, but then I think perhaps because we’re not pushing people that perhaps aren’t necessarily appropriate for the study, then we’re getting the right people, and then they are staying on the study throughout. But I think, I mean I think that’s one of the hardest things in research is recruiting [laugh] people, recruiting people to studies because you don’t want, you don’t want to persuade people to do something, you know. You, I think especially as a nurse, you want to be an advocate for that person and, you know, if someone has got reservations about it then you don’t want to, you know, you don’t want to push them to do something that isn’t really right for them [cough] for whatever reason. So it’s sort of finding a balance between sort of, you know, trying to sort of be positive about the study but equally not, not forcing people to do something they don’t want to do.

So, I think sometimes the sort of view of research nurse is that kind of we’ve got plenty of time to sort of sit around having cups of tea, and that sort of thing. So, but then I sort of think well I’ve been a nurse for years, I’ve, you know I kind of know I’ve done all that other stuff as well’, so I kind of, and I usually say to people if I see them at study days, I say, Well you should give research nursing a try, cos actually I think the thing that’s nice is you’ve actually got time to spend with people, so you can actually treat people the way you would have liked to have treated them when you didn’t have the time when you were doing one of your other roles. You know, you can really spend the time talking to people and trying to, you know, sort of help them out and that sort of thing.

Then I, but then I think there is a part of me that misses kind of being a clinical nurse, where you’re the person that’s kind of helping somebody, as it were. And, you know, and I suppose that’s why I became a nurse in the first place. So there is a part of me that misses, misses that side of it, sort of being the person that, you know, I don’t know, a patient kind of, you get that relationship where you know you’ve sort of helped somebody and, and you’ve sort of built up a bit of a relationship through that. And, although you do build up relationships with research participants sometimes, if they’re there over time, it’s different.