Dr Lynsey Forsythe, Research Associate in Sport and Exercise Cardiology, University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, shares her top tips on getting involved in clinical research.
Why get involved in clinical research?
Involvement in research and development is a core part of clinical practice and is set out in the 4 pillars of practice:
- Clinical or professional practice
- Leadership
- Facilitation of learning
- Evidence, research and improvement
There are several ways to get involved in research within your clinical career:
- Use current research evidence in your daily clinical work to help inform clinical decision making.
- Get involved in other people’s research and offer help to support research studies going on within your department / organisation.
- Start to build a clinical academic career if you would like to develop and lead your own research in the future.
Research within your career will look different for everyone depending on your role, stage of career and personal interests and preferences. The research capability framework is a useful way to understand what research in practice could look like for you.
Use current research evidence
- If you have a specific interest / topic to explore, use library resources within your organisation to do literature searches for example.
- Access the evidence base by gaining access to NHS openathens and online search databases. You should be able to get help with this at your organisation library.
- Search what has already been done. Understand the evidence.
- Keep up to date with clinical research and support others in your team
- Journal clubs can be useful to review research in a particular area and to build critical appraisal skills.
- There are many opportunities for clinicians to become expert reviewers for academic journals.
Get involved in other people’s research
- Shadow a researcher (Cardiac physiologist/scientist, medical staff, nursing and other HCS and AHP colleagues).
- Research mentorships – Find a research mentor. Contact clinical academics or university researchers in your field.
- Find people with an area of expertise or working on a topic of interest to you. Contact them and ask if you can get involved with their research.
- Approach BSE research committee members. Join BSE research network and other research networks of interest.
- Become a collaborator – a great way to get involved in research. Your clinical knowledge helps makes research relevant to clinical practice. Approach academic colleagues or link with research active clinicians.
- Get in touch with the research and development (R&D) department within your organisation, there may be a lead for professional and academic development for clinical staff within your organisation who can help you find out what is happening.
- If you have a general research interest, local research networks can be useful, speak to your line manager or R&D department about opportunities that may be available.
- Your trust may support a researcher development programme. Some organisations have research training workshops available for example, clinical research methods.
- Audit and evaluation training opportunities are often available through your trust / organisation. Clinical audit, service evaluation, and quality Improvement (QI) studies can be nice early steps into research and can help to take forward a research idea.
- External training – see NIHR website
- Undertake research training – good clinical practice (GCP) training.
- NIHR academy, NIHR RGN networks
- Clinician researcher credentials courses – NHSE and NIHR have sponsored the development of a PG cert, PG Dip, MSc pathway. Flexible online course for clinically embedded staff that want to know and understand more about research leadership within the NHS. Bursaries are available for these courses which can be used to back fill posts.
Start to build a clinical academic career
- Clinical academic careers
- External training is available through the NIHR Associate PI scheme. Lead research delivery in your area – All research carried out in the NHS needs a principal investigator (PI). A PI is responsible for co-ordinating the research within their team.
- NIHR Doctoral / Post-Doctoral programmes.
- Clinician researcher credentials courses (see above).
- If you have a clinical research idea and would like to do your own research contact the R&D department within your organisation.
- Ask about training workshops and help for researchers in terms of applying for funding streams for your research.
- It is important to consider working alongside patients and the public to ensure research activity focusses on what matters to them - Patient and Public Involvement (PPI).
We can all help to grow a culture of research and improvement.
- Encourage and support others to get involved in research activity. Signpost all training opportunities.
- Disseminate your work and share experiences:
- Write an article
- Create a poster
- Present at a conference
- Write a blog
- Make a video
- Post on social media
References
- Research | The Academy of Research and Improvement [Internet]. Academy of Research. 2025 [cited 2025 Apr 7]. Available from: https://academy.hiowhealthcare.nhs.uk/research
- Multi-professional Practice-based Research Capabilities Framework [Internet]. Advanced Practice. Available from: https://advanced-practice.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/research/multi-professional-practice-based-research-capabilities-framework/
Useful websites
This article was originally published in ECHO 131.