Moving from NHS clinical practice into academia (healthcare)

[MidMay]

I'm a fairly newly qualified healthcare professional and am looking to move away from clinical practice for many reasons.

At Uni I was encouraged to go back to further studies (received a good 1st class degree) and had planned to do so eventually, perhaps alongside working clinically, but increasingly this is looking unlikely.

I was thinking in the first instance of approaching my previous personal tutor from University to discuss options, but is there anyone else here who has moved into academia from clinical practice and could shed some light on options and where I should be looking?

How newly qualified are you? I looked at this idea at one stage and from all I have gathered, lecturers tend to have several years' working experience in their field under their belt prior to entering academia, even if its only part time. It's important not to underestimate what a jolt the difference in working environment will be coming from clinical practice. How is funding going to affect your plans? You may find there is considerable financial belt-tightening in your field and opportunities may be rather thin on the ground currently.

brodchengretchen I've been qualified 2 years. Due to various factors, I am not currently clinical and it is possible this may be a long-term situation. I'm not necessarily looking into lecturing as my end goal as appreciate the financial demands on educational institutions, but I don't want my degree to go to waste given I had planned on returning to my studies at some point.
In terms of funding, I could self-fund a Masters alongside non-clinical work but would hope to gain external funding (non NHS) if I were to go along the PhD route.

Try your local NIHR research design service. www.rds.nihr.ac.uk/ There's loads of stuff aimed at health professions, although generally pretty competitive.

www.nottingham.ac.uk/pgstudy/courses/nursing-midwifery-and-physiotherapy/research-methods-(health)-ma.aspx

would be one option to consider but lots of universities have similar.

A lot of the funding opportunities from NIHR, RCN etc will be restricted to currently registered professionals though - from a funding perspective it's actually easier to attract funding for a Masters or DPhil part time whilst working clinically. It's possible though that a supervisor who knows you and has faith in your abilities will be able to use their post/institution to leverage a studentship for you but you'd need to be okay with living on quite a small stipend.

(Of course if you've kept your registration even when not working clinically then it's less of an issue!)

I may know a little about this... used to sit next to RDS people, and medical doctors who also do academia. Would you mind saying what is your healthcare qualification?

I suspect best bet is to approach health science faculties & ask them about paths to get into academia. There will be not inconsiderable chasing down people to get helpful info. My sense of "clinical lecturer" etc. is that all those people are still simultaneously seeing patients. Have you looked at findaphd.com, could you live like a student again? There is some way to get fellowships that pay a bit better to also fund PhDs, but I think they are very very competitive to get.

Degree is in midwifery MedSchoolRat.

Some really informative stuff here, thank you. I've made contact with the University I attended as one of the lecturers (who was keen that I return) is part way through her PhD so I've asked her to signpost me.

Mumonashoestring yes, I suspect that a part clinical, part academic role will be the preferred pathway from the perspective of the faculties/NHS - a fully funded MRes is available at my local Uni. If I I can I'd like to maintain my registration and I guess it's worth seeing if I can use my studies to keep my registration live without actually being on the 'shop floor' as it were. I think I'll speak to research dept where I work currently to sound them out too.

It's often possible to work in some bank hours if you're undertaking a research degree; certainly enough to keep up your registration if you're working in clinical research as well. If you want to pm me an email address & let me know roughly where you are I can send on some info about funding, research training and development if that would be helpful?