Volume 1
Medical research and the NHS reforms / House of Lords, Select Committee on Science and Technology.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
- Date:
- 1995
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: Medical research and the NHS reforms / House of Lords, Select Committee on Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![The Webb Report: A Strategy for Research in Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting 36. In April 1992, the NHS Director of R&D and the Chief Nursing Officer set up a Task Force on research in the nursing professions. The context for the Task Force consisted of the NHS R&D Strategy, the Strategy for Nursing, and existing strategies for nursing research in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Canada and the USA. The Task Force was chaired by Adrian Webb, Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University; the members were four researchers, a Regional Chief Nurse and the General Secretary of the RCN. They were asked to consider the nature of nursing research, and how to set priorities, conduct research, train researchers, and get the research into practice. They reported in May 1993. 37. The Task Force traced nursing research in the UK back to charity-funded work in the 1950s. The DH[SS] has sponsored research since 1968, and now funds two units (the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit in Oxford and the Medical Care Research Unit in Sheffield), commissioned programmes and projects, research training awards (see above) and a research database; but the Task Force considered this investment too small for the need. Much nursing research until now was small-scale, discontinuous, poorly disseminated and not generalisable. 38. The Task Force saw nursing research as a branch of health services research, embracing nursing practices, nursing services and their delivery, the nursing professions and workforces and their training and deployment, health promotion, and service systems involving nursing alongside other professions. “The nursing professions have research priorities and agenda which differ in approach and detail [from other professions] and which extend beyond the interests of the NHS”. Nursing research was neither the exclusive preserve of nurse researchers, nor the only area of health services research to which nurses could contribute; the Task Force stressed the value of multi- professional and multidisciplinary research. 39. The Task Force recommended that nursing research be made a full and equal partner in the NHS R&D Strategy. “Neither the managerial culture in the NHS nor the nursing practice culture has been sufficiently supportive”; this must be put right, through corporate contracts, audit and professional accountability. Rather than setting separate priorities for nursing research, all research priority-setting exercises should take account of the nursing dimension. “A nursing perspective often seems to be inappropriately presented or wholly absent from key bodies, the networks linking the nursing professions into the research world seem underdeveloped, and vital information on funding and training opportunities can be difficult to obtain”; henceforth, nursing should be taken fully into account by the NHS DRD and RHAs in establishing structures to set R&D priorities, disseminate findings and implement them, in manning committees, including ethics committees (the Task Force commended the composition of the CRDC), and in funding and managing research. RHAs should be accountable to the DRD for the place of nursing in their R&D plans. To get nursing research into practice, purchasers should involve nurse researchers in “the public health and contracting functions”. The current network of Regional Representatives on Nursing Research, supported by the Department of Health, should be made “stronger and more authoritative”. 40. The Task Force recommended that “the proliferation of inadequately supervised, small-scale projects should be curbed”, and the present “inadequate and rather ad hoc” provision for postgraduate research training be improved. They acknowledge that other professions also needed more research training, but insisted that nursing warranted “special provision”. They called for: — funding for MSc courses provided by the MRC and ESRC under their Concordats with the Department of Health; — DH-funded research training places in institutions which receive DH infrastructure funding for health services research; — DH-funded research studentships attached by open competition to centres of research excellence; — a fourfold increase in research training awards by 1996; — RHA-funded research training posts attracting G-Grade salaries, for nurses seeking research training in mid-career; — RHA funds for locum cover, to enable nurses to do research without quitting clinical practice (“The nursing professions are disadvantaged by comparison with parts of the medical profession in this respect”);](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32219337_0001_0118.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
