It is the end of another busy week in a full time clinical job and a good time to reflect on the last few years doing clinical research. Hopefully looking back has not become disproportionally rose tinted already, but like many trainees I now face the difficulty of trying to perform studies and publish work while doing a full time job. So what was different about a research post and would I recommend it?

Training in academic medicine alongside specialty training is accessible through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) integrated academic training programme. Before starting my 3.5-year period of out of programme research (OOPR) I had already performed pilot studies during an Academic Clinical Fellowship (part of the NIHR program) which had included a 6-month block of research early in my registrar training. This was clearly a massive benefit to my research as I already knew the team I would be working with, and was able to focus on my work from day one. I …