Achieving the Research Pillar: A Research Toolkit for Advanced Practitioners

On this blog, Dr. Kerry Gaskin, Associate Professor of Nursing, discusses the event of the Advanced Practice Research Toolkit that may enable AP teams and individuals to plan activities inside the research pillar of their role.

There’s a growing belief that hospitals conducting lively research can save lives, improve health care, and improve patient outcomes (Jonker and Fischer 2018; Ozdemir et al. 2015). In November 2021, the Chief Nursing Officer for England’s Strategic Plan for Research (NHSE 2021) and the Allied Health Career Research and Innovation Strategy for England (HEY 2022) after which this 12 months the Chief Midwifery Officer in England presented a strategic research plan (NHSE 2023). Moreover, the statutory duties of NHS England and Integrated Care Systems require them to “facilitate and otherwise promote research” (The Health and Care Act 2022). These strategies provide a framework for collaboratively developing and investing in research activities for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals across the National Health Service (NHS); supporting health and care professionals (HCPs) by ensuring they’ve the capability and opportunity to integrate research into their every day activities; increasing the knowledge and skills of NHS leaders to support staff to interact in research; supporting frontline staff in managing deliveries; improving recognition of the impact of research on the protection and quality of care; and knowledge translation (Barwicka 2022) research results aimed toward improving care, experience and outcomes for patients, society and organizational performance (Common market organization 2023p.3).

A key group of healthcare professionals for whom research is a fundamental pillar of their role are those working at the extent of advanced clinical practice (HEY 2017). Research capability is important to make sure translation of information into clinical practice, but research is a less established pillar (Fielding et al. 2022). Anecdotally, some advanced practitioners (APs) perceive this pillar as tougher to realize inside their role as a consequence of barriers equivalent to the impact of operational pressures on performance, leading to a scarcity of time dedicated to research. Moreover, although the Multi-Industry Framework (HEE 2017) identifies eight research opportunities for healthcare professionals working at AP level, a standard theme emerging from AP communication in a single NHS Foundation Trust was:not knowing how or where to start out”. Because of this of those conversations and the character of the research support requests requested by various APs and AP teams, the Advanced Practice Research Toolkit was developed to:

• create a framework for research discussions
• support advanced practitioners in ‘getting began’ on research
• encourage advanced practice teams to think about their research priorities
• enable individual and team setting of research goals
• discussions on aid evaluation

The toolkit is split into two sections:

: : framework of research pillars

This section presents a framework that mixes the capabilities of the research pillar (HEE 2017) with suggested individual and team activities, together with sample resources and training opportunities (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Home page of the AP Research Toolkit

journal of research pillar activities

This section is meant to assist APs work with their research mentor to plan and record research activities, taking into consideration their medium-term (3-year) research ambitions for research activities each planned (next 12 months) and accomplished (previous 12 months) ). We encourage them to share the data on this journal with their immediate supervisor for further discussions about their research aspirations and goals more broadly inside their AP role (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Home page of the research pillar activity log

The draft toolkit has been disseminated to APs across the Trust through the AP and Research joint decision-making boards and presented on the One Gloucestershire Advanced Practice Summit in March 2023, and can be formatively assessed in six months as a part of a top quality improvement project.

The concept of a toolkit to support APs in developing their research pillar has attracted interest from APs across the South West region and beyond and is aligned with the HEE (2022) South West principles.”Development of qualified research staff strategy accompanying the “development of qualified workforce” project implemented by University of Plymouth, funded by NHS England South West. The net introduction to the toolkit is: available at this linkwhich is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For more information or for a replica of the operational version of the AP Research Toolkit in Microsoft Word format, please contact Dr. Kerry Gaskin Kerry.gaskin1@nhs.net

Barwick M (2022) Knowledge translation: why it ought to be warmer than it’s, Evidence-based nursingavailable at: https://ebn.bmj.com/content/25/4/109 [accessed 31/5/23]

Fielding C, Riley J, Sutherland C, Swift K, Gordon A. (2022) Research as a part of the advanced clinical practitioner role. British Journal of Nursing. 31(7):372-374. doi: 10.12968/bjon.2022.31.7.372. PMID: 35404650

Health Education England (2017) Multiprofessional Framework for Advanced Clinical Practice, available at: https://www.hee.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/documents/multi-professionalframeworkforadvancedclinicalpracticeinengland.pdf [accessed 31/5/23]

Health Education England (2022) Allied Health Professions Research and Innovation Strategy for England, available at: https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/allied-health-professions/enable-workforce/allied-health-professions%E2%80%99-research-innovation-strategy-england [accessed 31/5/23]

Health Education South West England (2022)Development of qualified research staff regional strategic plan for the capability and capability of research staff on the web site for 2023–2026, available at: https://www.hee.nhs.uk/about/how-we-work/your-area/south-west/south-west-news/developing-research-skilled-workforce [accessed 31/5/23]

Jonker L, Fisher SJ (2018) Correlation between National Health Service funding clinical research activities and mortality rates and care quality committee rankings: a retrospective cross-sectional study, Public health157: 1-6, ISSN 0033-3506, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2017.12.022.

NHSE (2021) Making Research Matter Chief Nursing Officer for England’s Strategic Plan for Research, available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/B0880-cno-for-englands-strategic-plan-fo-research.pdf [accessed 31/5/23]

NHSE (2023) Midwifery Director for England’s Strategic Research Plan, available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/chief-midwifery-officer-for-englands-strategic-plan-for-research/ [accessed 31/5/23]

Ozdemir BA, Karthikesalingam A, Sinha S, Poloniecki JD, Hinchliffe RJ, Thompson MM, Gower JD, Boaz A, Holt PJ. Research activities and association with mortality. PLoS One. 2015Feb26;10(2):e0118253. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0118253. PMID: 25719608; PMCID: PMC4342017.

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