R&D careers open days: 6 and 9 September

September 2, 2021

Do you know what the research team do to help our patients participate in research? Have you seen one of our clinical research practitioner job adverts and wondered what the role entails?

We have started using the job title clinical research practitioner (CRP) to make the role more inclusive. Traditionally research nurses worked in research and development (R&D) to recruit and support our patients to take part in research, but you don’t need to be a nurse for many our studies. For example, Gina Dutton, our head of R&D, was a research radiographer and we know that many Trusts have research physiotherapists and occupational therapists.

In addition to registered healthcare professionals, we also have a role of clinical trials practitioner, which was previously for unregistered staff. From this year, CRPs can be registered with the Academy of Healthcare Scientists which is a positive step forward to recognising the equivalence of the work that our CRPs do and to professionalise the role.

R&D would like to increase the diversity of healthcare professionals into our research team. The team would like to speak to colleagues who might like to join the R&D team in the next few years.

We will be holding a series of open events for colleagues to come to the department and meet with members of the team to explain the work of the patient facing R&D team. Following the open days, we will have several posts to advertise, some of which will be available on a secondment basis so that you can try out the role.  We also have non-patient facing roles and we will hold similar events in the future when we have posts available.

For more information and to attend, please email judith.cox@nhs.net.