AUTHOR=Menzies Julie C. , Jennings Claire , Marshall Rebecca 

TITLE=A Survey of Resources and Nursing Workforce for Clinical Research Delivery in Paediatric Intensive Care Within the UK / Ireland

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Pediatrics

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pediatrics/articles/10.3389/fped.2022.848378

DOI=10.3389/fped.2022.848378

ISSN=2296-2360

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Introduction</title><p>Clinical research within Paediatric Intensive Care (PICU) is necessary to reduce morbidity and mortality associated within this resource-intensive environment. With UK PICUs encouraged to be research-active there was a drive to understand how centres support research delivery.</p></sec><sec><title>Aim</title><p>To identify the research workforce available within UK/Ireland PICUs to support clinical research delivery.</p></sec><sec><title>Method</title><p>An electronic survey, endorsed by the Paediatric Critical Care Society (PCCS), was designed and reported in accordance with CHERRIES guidelines. The survey was distributed by email to all UK/Ireland Nurse Managers and Medical/ Nursing Research leads, aiming for one response per site during the period of April-June 2021. Only one response per site was included in analysis.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>44 responses were received, representing 24/30 UK/Ireland sites (80% response rate). Responses from <italic>n</italic> = 21/30 units are included (three excluded for insufficient data). 90% (<italic>n</italic> = 19/21) units were research active, although only 52% (<italic>n</italic> = 11) had permanent research roles funded within their staffing establishment. The majority of units (<italic>n</italic> = 18, 86%) had less than two WTE research nurses. Resources were felt to be sufficient for current research delivery by 43% of units (<italic>n</italic> = 9), but this confidence diminished to 19% (<italic>n</italic> = 4) when considering their ability to support future research. The top barriers to research conduct were insufficiently funded/unfunded studies (52%; <italic>n</italic> = 11), clinical staff too busy to support research activity (52%; <italic>n</italic> = 11) and short-term/fixed-term contracts for research staff (38%; <italic>n</italic> = 8).</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion</title><p>Despite the perceived importance of research and 90% of responding UK/Ireland PICUs being research active, the majority have limited resources to support research delivery. This has implications for their ability to participate in future multi-centre trials and opportunities to support the development of future medical/nursing clinical academics. Further work is required to identify optimum models of clinical research delivery.</p></sec>