Capitalising on the transformational opportunities of early clinical academic career training for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals

BACKGROUND: A highly skilled workforce is required to deliver high quality evidence-based care. Clinical academic career training programmes have been developed to build capacity and capabilities of nurses, midwives and allied health professionals (NMAHPs) but it remains unclear how these skills and roles are operationalised in the healthcare context. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of early career clinical academic NMAHPs who have undertaken, or are undertaking, clinical academic master’s and doctoral studies in the United Kingdom. METHODS: We conducted 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews with early career clinical academics which included; nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Two themes emerged from the data; identity transformation and operationalising transformation. Both these highlighted the challenges and opportunities that early clinical academic training provided to the individual and organisation in which they practiced. This required the reconceptualization of this training from the pure acquisition of skills to one of personal and professional transformation. The findings suggest that individuals, funders, and organisations may need to relinquish the notion that training is purely or largely a transactional exchange in order to establish collaborative initiatives. CONCLUSION: Stakeholders need to recognise that a cultural shift about the purposes of research training from a transactional to transformative approaches is required to facilitate the development of NMAHPS clinical academics, to enable them to contribute to innovative health and patient care. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-020-02348-2.