Research Internship Opportunities for Health and Care Professionals/Practitioners in the South West region, Autumn 2024
 

National Health Service England (NHSE) South West are delighted to offer an expanded research internship programme for health and care professionals and practitioners (HCPs) for Autumn 2024. These personal development awards are part of extra funding from the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) to help HCPs become skilled researchers and research leaders as part of the NIHR research career funding programme.  

The expanded internship award is for registered health and care professionals/practitioners in the following circumstances:
 

• in clinical or practitioner roles with little or no research experience to champion research and/or undertake activities to support and embed the application of research evidence in practice

• in research delivery roles who want to use an internship to extend their research delivery skills, improve research delivery and engagement, and/or gain experience in wider aspects of the research process

• in Enhanced or Advanced Practitioners roles who want to develop the research pillar of their role and/or to develop team research culture and confidence

• aspiring to be clinical or practitioner academics who want to develop their research knowledge and skills to lay foundations for preparing to apply for a funding award such as the Pre-doctoral/Doctoral Clinical and Practitioner Academic Fellowship (PCAF/DCAF) and Pre-doctoral/Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship (PLAF/DLAF).
   

The award can be used build a plan for personal research development for advancing a research positive culture, embedding research into practice, building organisational leadership capacity for research, advancing specialism of research delivery or clinical/practitioner academic development. This award is unlikely to suit those who have completed research masters or doctoral degrees.

Further information about the expanded internship programme is available in the guidance notes. The guidance notes for the award includes information about how to apply for this award and a link to the online application form. The closing date and time for submission of the online application form is 6pm, Wednesday 18thDecember 2024.

There will be a webinar about the Research Internship opportunity on Thursday 7th November 2024, 12.30-1.30pm. Register your interest to attend and get the Microsoft Teams link for the webinar via this link https://forms.office.com/e/2uvysmuN0q 

​

HEI Contacts for the South West ICA programme

There is a network of named contacts for the ICA programme at Higher Education Institutes in the South West that can help with enquiries about applying for the award and potential supervisors with relevant expertise. 
 

Bournemouth University: Prof Jane Murphy (jmurphy@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Health Sciences University, Bournemouth: Dr Michelle Holmes (mholmes@aecc.ac.uk)

Plymouth Marjon University: Prof Gary Shum (gshum@marjon.ac.uk)

University of Bath: Dr Tim Rennie (twr32@bath.ac.uk)

University of Exeter: Dr Sophie Gould (S.L.Gould@exeter.ac.uk)

University of Gloucestershire: Dr Liz Berragan (lberragan@glos.ac.uk)

University of Plymouth: Dr Lisa Bunn (lisa.bunn@plymouth.ac.uk)

UWE Bristol: Assoc Prof. Mary Cramp (mary.cramp@uwe.ac.uk)

 

You can also email SW.ICAP@nihr.ac.uk for further information or advice.

Please note: the Pre-doctoral Bridging award and Post-doctoral Bridging awards previously offered as part of the South West Integrated Clinical and Practitioner Academic Programme are not available in Autumn 2024. Other NIHR awards to consider include Pre-application Support Fund, Development and Skills Enhancement Award (DSE), Senior Clinical and Practitioner Research Award.

​

​