Editor—An Academy of Medical Sciences report and recent articles have outlined a decline in capacity to undertake clinical research and identified the need to reconsider funding.1-3 This has occurred despite a reorganisation of NHS research and development that aimed to create an NHS culture valuing research. The highlighted changes in university appointments, which have encouraged clinical academics to engage in more basic research, have perhaps also been accompanied by neglect of the role of other NHS staff willing and critically able to support research activity.
Surprisingly, non-clinician scientists in medical research were not mentioned at all, although they were the focus of an earlier academy report.4 That report urged “an imaginative approach... to questions of funding long-term posts for contract research workers” and identified other problems experienced by non-clinically qualified research staff in a clinical environment. These included exclusion, now further apparent from the academy's most recent report.3 These researchers contribute significantly to the clinical research effort and deserve greater consideration in the current debate.
Pressures on both clinicians and non-clinician scientists to engage in more fundamental research have been accompanied by deterioration in the infrastructure necessary for effective clinical research. New clinical research facilities address this to a degree, but to a large extent they are not where the patients are and they lack the infrastructure that might be provided in well resourced and organised teaching hospitals, with access to a range of good laboratory and investigational resources.
Can we hope that corrective measures will avoid the attractions of fashion and bandwagons in favour of a more integrated approach that will engage all areas of activity and all parties?
Competing interests: None declared.
References
- 1.Academy of Medical Sciences. Strengthening clinical research. www.acmedsci.ac.uk (accessed 7 Nov 2003).
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- 4.Academy of Medical Sciences. Non-clinical scientists on short-term contracts in medical research: a report on career prospects and recommendations for change. www.acmedsci.ac.uk (accessed 7 Nov 2003).