Non-Medical Opportunities

The NIHR Imperial BRC is committed to training and development and has two core objectives within its Academic Career Development Strategy.  These are to:

• Provide high quality training/development opportunities at all stages of the NIHR Clinical Academic training pathway.
• Build research capacity/capability in all clinical professions, paying particular attention to under-represented groups e.g. women, minority ethnic or clinical profession specific

As part of the AHSC, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust strongly supports the Health Education England (HEE) and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Integrated Clinical Academic (ICA) Programme. This programme provides personal research training awards (fellowships) for healthcare professionals (excluding doctors and dentists) who wish to develop careers that combine clinical research and research leadership with continued clinical practice and clinical development. Applicants must belong to one of the eligible professions.

Five levels of award are available, each requiring the support of clinical and academic host organisations, which together form a fellowship pathway for aspiring and developing non-medical clinical academics.

NMAHPPs can also apply for the NIHR fellowships, which are open to all staff working within an HEI, NHS body or other provider of health and/or care services.  Four levels of award are available within this pathway, and applicants can spend up to 20% time in clinical practice.

At more local level the NIHR Imperial BRC also co-funds pre- and post-doctoral fellowships for NMAHPPs with Imperial Health Charity.  These are also open to medical applicants, although a proportion are ring-fenced for NMAHPPs.  These fellowships provide a full-time salary, research and training costs up to £85k each in total.  They provide an excellent opportunity for NMAHPPs to undertake a patient-centred research project over one year full-time or two years part-time to gain experience and find out if they’d like to apply for PhD funding. This work will then prepare them towards an application for PhD funding. One BRC-funded PhD fellowship for NMAHPPs is available in 2023.

In addition to supporting clinical academic capacity and capability development through fellowships at Imperial, the BRC will support NMAHPPs from HEIs and NHS Trusts in Cumbria and London North West University NHS Trust.

The BRC strategy also includes support for the following:

• Research training opportunities for clinical research delivery and NMAHPP staff
• Building capacity and capability in public involvement, engagement and participation (PIEP) through placements for 1-2 days per week with the Imperial Patient Experience Research Centre (PERC)
• Reduced (50%) costs for Imperial College London’s MRes in Clinical Research (Translational Medicine)
• Research PAs (Programmed Activities) for some post-doctoral NMAHPP staff who are building their clinical academic career
• Additional support for externally funded studentships e.g.
  • Stratified Medicine Graduate Training Programme in Systems Medicine and Spectroscopic Profiling (STRATIGRAD) programme, Pharma-funded schemes to build expertise in molecular phenotyping
  • Centre for Doctoral Training in Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
  • Centre for Doctoral Training in Chemical Biology
  • MRC London Institute of Medical Science Chain-Florey PhD fellowship
• Imperial Impact Acceleration Account seed funding to establish concepts with potential to meet market need in medicine.

The BRC’s Academic Career Development Strategy is co-led by Professors Jeremy Levy (Medic), Caroline Alexander (Physiotherapist) and Mary Wells (Nurse), who are all members of the CATO Executive.  Prof Alexander sits on the BRC Executive Committee and has a standing item on Training and Development at each meeting.

Through strong links with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (ICHT), Imperial College London and the wider Imperial AHSC, the BRC supports a wide range of research and clinical academic activity for NMAHPPs and medical staff.  Download the latest NMAHPP research annual report here.

Over the past few years, the BRC has supported a programme of work on impacts related to NMAHPP research.  The following infographics contain an overview of this work

For further information on clinical academic career development, support and training please see CATO and https://www.catch.ac.uk/

Further information on training opportunities for NMAHPP clinicians can also be found on the Imperial AHSC and NIHR website (NIHR Fellowship Programme, NIHR Career development).

Senior NMAHPP Fellows:

• Justin Roe,
• Shawn Walker
• Natalie Pattison
• Margaret Coffey
• Lina Johansson

NMAHPP Post-doctoral Fellows:

• Shauna McKibben
• Lucia Ramirez-Montesinos
• Huw Woodbridge
• Donna Kennedy
• Gemma Clunie

Launch event of the Humans of Health Research series. It features photography and interviews with researchers who talk about why they carry out research, what they’ve learned, and advice for future researchers. Many juggle research and clinical work and those featured include midwives, physiotherapists, pharmacists, nurses and healthcare scientists. Patients also talk about the reasons why they got involved in research and how taking part has affected their health and their life.