Background Research forms an important part of clinical practice for nurses, midwives and allied healthcare professionals (NMAHPs). However, it is known there is a lack of confidence in this community in the development and use of research skills. The 4Ps Programme is a bespoke research-training programme that focuses on four areas: place, project, person and plan.

Aim To report an evaluation of the 4Ps Programme that used a survey to record the confidence levels reported by NMAHPs.

Discussion An increase in participants’ confidence was observed across all modules in the 4Ps Programme. This exceeded the standard deviation in the ‘place’ session, demonstrating genuine improvement. It was not possible to demonstrate a significant improvement in all cases. Low response rates affected the quality of the data obtained in the study, which would have benefitted from a more targeted approach to questions and better enabled the tracking of individuals’ improvement over the course of the programme.

Conclusion Participation in bespoke, targeted training related to research could lead to an increase in NMAHPs’ confidence in research-related activities. Efforts need to be made to refine the evaluation approach and improve response rates.

Implications for practice The 4Ps Programme can improve research-related confidence. Improved and further longitudinal evaluation will assess its impact in developing future clinical academics.

Nurse Researcher. 32, 3, 9-16. doi: 10.7748/nr.2024.e1915

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Correspondence

felicity.pope1@nhs.net

Conflict of interest

None declared

Pope F, Faraday J, Hand A et al (2024) An evaluation of the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals 4Ps Programme for the development of nurses, midwives and allied healthcare professionals’ research skills. Nurse Researcher. doi: 10.7748/nr.2024.e1915

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of people from the following organisations: Newcastle University; Northumbria University; The Newcastle Joint Research Office; The National Institute for Health Research North East and North Cumbria Local Clinical Research Network; The National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Collaboration; The North East Research Design Service; and The Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre. They would also like to thank Thomas Pope, research associate, Newcastle University. They would particularly like to thank Lisa Robinson, Kate Hallsworth, Vikki Smith, Clare Abley, Alison Blackburn, James Faraday, Jennifer Murphy, Margaret Day, Fiona Collin and Paul Young from The Newcastle Hospitals, who were pivotal in the development of module content

Published online: 11 April 2024