LAUSR

The Association of UK University Hospitals (AUKUH) has put forward an aspirational goal to significantly increase the proportion of the nursing, midwifery and allied health professional (NMAHP) workforce working in clinical academic roles by 2030 (CarrickSen et al., 2016). The Council of Deans of Health report (Baltruks and Callaghan, 2018) emphasises the continued challenge to embed such roles, and cites recent data that indicate the overall proportion of clinical academic NMAHPs in the UK as being less than 0.1% of the workforce. This stands in contrast to 4.6% of the medical consultant workforce. The reviewed study is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on clinical academic careers in the nursing and midwifery professions in the UK that have their origins in the Finch Report (UK Clinical Research Collaboration, 2007). Existing published models have focused on doctoral, post-doctoral and professorial appointments (Gerrish and Chapman, 2017; Westwood et al., 2018), with those in England being linked closely to the Health Education England (HEE)/National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Integrated Clinical Academic Programme. The ‘Chief Nurse Excellence in Care Junior Fellow’ initiative has been established in a large inner-city, acute NHS trust with the support of senior nurse leaders and the organisation’s existing clinical academic nurses. It offers a well-structured funded programme at pre-Master’s level, specifically for nurses at band 5 level. There are parallels with the recent addition to the HEE/NIHR Integrated Clinical Academic Programme in the form of internship schemes (https://heeoe.hee.nhs.uk/caip), which are being offered through clinical academic partnerships in a few regions of England (for example Yorkshire, East Midlands, Kent, Surrey and Sussex).