A Clinical Academic Nurse or Allied Health Professional (AHP) is typically a clinically active health researcher. They work in the NHS as clinicians while in parallel researching new ways of delivering better outcomes for the patients that they treat. As they remain clinically active, their research is grounded in the day to day clinical issues they deal with, and importantly they form partnerships with other academics and clinicians.
Whilst the emphasis is often on research, people in these roles are curious, critical and creative. They drive quality improvement programmes, use analytical and research skills to question, investigate, research and innovate to accelerate improved clinical care.
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There are various ways of funding a clinical academic role:
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Solent Academy internships are available every year – these are designed to support people to get into research or to help progression of a clinical academic career. They can be about getting started, pre MSc, or they can help bridge gaps between MSc/PhD or PhD/Post-Doctoral fellowship applications.
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Solent Academy has a partnership with the University of Southampton to jointly support a Clinical Academic Doctoral Fellowship Programme. These are joint posts for working clinically, whilst undertaking a PhD.
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Health Education Wessex often fund fellowships for research training.
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The National Institute for Health Research has a Clinical Academic Career Pathway. These are slightly different depending on profession:
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Look out for opportunities on our news pages or email academy@solent.nhs.uk if you’d like to be added to our clinical academic mailing list.
For more information about clinical academic roles in the NHS, please take a look at this useful toolkit from AUKUH.
