Nursing Midwifery & Allied Health Professions Research Unit

Delivering, supporting and promoting high quality research to improve health

The Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit (NMAHP Research Unit) is funded by the Scottish Government to carry out high quality research into direct patient care.  The aim of our research is to improve outcomes for patients, with patients, practitioners and the public collaborating on the selection of research topics, the design of research studies and in disseminating our findings. The Unit has recently been successfully reviewed, and has revised its research programmes.  The website will be updated in due course to reflect these changes. An outline of the Unit’s new cross-cutting programmes of work are given on the “About Us” page.

The research we carry out provides evidence for NHS patients, practitioners and decision makers and we strive to involve these stakeholders in all the research we carry out.  This ensures that all our research is directly relevant to NMAHP practice; in particular we carry out research into the fundamental aspects of care, and this is reflected in the content of the three programmes of research supported by the Unit. 

Interventions provided by NMAHPs are typically complex and the effectiveness of these interventions are often questioned and thus much of the Unit’s work is related to the development and implementation of large scale trials of complex NMAHP interventions; expertise in systematic reviews and in the design and successful completion of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and cluster randomised trials (CRT) is embedded in all our three programmes of work.

Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals work very closely with patients, often over long periods of time.  Much of this work involves them in autonomous clinical decision making and in sharing decisions with their patients. The Unit has expertise in clinical and shared decision making research in the context of NMAHP practice, which informs many of our studies and is the primary focus of one of our programmes of research.

We work collaboratively with academic and clinical colleagues across Scotland and internationally to enable us to maximise the valuable outputs we produce.  We aim to increase the capacity and capability of NMAHP researchers at all levels, from the novice researcher to the research leader, through supervision, mentoring, and involvement in the Unit’s programmes of work.

Each programme of research is led by a senior member of staff, with the wealth of methodological, research and clinical expertise being shared across the Unit. This programmatic approach to research has been supported by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health Directorates for a number of years, allowing a considerable body of work to be constructed and built upon, to the benefit of patients.

We are delighted to welcome Professor Margaret Maxwell who has recently joined the Unit as Deputy Director. Margaret is Head of the Scottish Primary Care Mental Health Research and Development Programme funded by the Scottish Government - this programme is conducted in partnership with the Scottish Development Centre for Mental Health.

Telephone:
Glasgow Caledonian University
+44 (0)141 331 8100
University of Stirling
+44 (0)1786 466 341