NIHR Health & Care Professional (HCP) Internship Programme 2026
APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED
Are you a Nurse, Midwife, Allied Health Professional, Pharmacist, Healthcare Scientist or working in Social Care, Social Work, looking to embark on a practitioner research career and make a difference through undertaking high quality research?
Do you have the drive and ambition to be a future research leader?
NHS R&D North West is pleased to announce that alongside its regional partners from NHS Trusts, Professional Networks and HEIs it will be delivering the NIHR Health and Care Professional Internship Programme across the North West Region of England in 2026.
There are 23 places available on this highly prestigious 12-month programme providing predoctoral tailored and bespoke learning and development to the full range of health and care professions (not including doctors and dentists) across the full range of research related career aspirations i.e. from a desire to increase research awareness within clinical practice up to and including providing individuals with a strong foundation on which to build a research related career.
If you are curious about putting research into practice or are already engaged in this in a limited way, then the Internship programme will be of interest.
The internship provides a funded opportunity for early career health and care researchers with dedicated time away from their substantive role to engage in research-based activities. It will:
- provide tailored learning and development for registered health and care professions (not including doctors and dentists)
- support individuals across the full range of research related career aspirations
- develop collaborative partnerships and networks between organisations at a regional level to support practitioner researchers
- embed a positive and inclusive research culture within health and care services
- offer participants an insight into the world of the practitioner researcher
- provide significant developmental opportunities to enable participants to begin to realise their research potential.
Eligibility
In order to be eligible for the programme applicants must:
- not already hold or be in the process of studying for higher degree research e.g. Professional Doctorate or PhD or equivalent.
- be a health or social care professional registered with one of the approved regulatory bodies listed here.
- have their main employment in the North West of England with an NHS Body, a provider of public or third sector funded health and/or social care services (for example a commissioned social enterprise, local authority or hospice that provides at least 50% of its services free at the point of delivery).
What is involved?
Over the 12-month programme, participants will be released from their substantive role for a total of 37 days. They will benefit from participation in a bespoke internship schedule of activity and learning, research shadowing, access to academic or clinical supervision, mentoring, group coaching and support to work on or propose their own achievable research project.
The key components of the programme are:
- up to 30 days of funded research time
- participation in a 6-day residential educational programme to increase knowledge and understanding of research and its place in the wider health and care research community. The 6 days are made up of 3 x 2-day residentials over the initial 6 months of the programme.
- exploration of personal and career research-based development goals.
- 1 day celebration event
Is funding available?
Successful interns will be awarded up to £10,000 to support educational engagement, training and development activities and salary backfill.
Salary backfill is available to employers to help create capacity to enable the award holder to participate in the full internship programme. It is not designed to necessarily fund a like for like replacement, but may be used for any of the following: overtime payment, agency staff, acting-up payment.
All applicants need to have the approval of their line manager and the agreement that the applicant will be released to complete the course successfully.
A fee of up to £1,500 will be paid to the supervisors’ employing organisation to fund the costs of intern supervision.
What do I need to do?
A copy of the application form can be downloaded here along with the guidance notes.
Please note that you must submit your application online here. To access and complete this form, you must be logged into a Google account. If you are experiencing issues with filling the form online, please email sara.coppa@researchnorthwest.nhs.uk.
If you do not have a supervisor or mentor, NHS R&D NW will assist you in identifying one.
How do I find out more?
After having read the guidance notes, if you have further questions please contact Jo-Anne Simpson, Chief Operating Officer, NHS R&D NW joanne.simpson@researchnorthwest.nhs.uk.
To support potential applicants with additional information regarding the programme and the application process, NHS R&D NW will be holding an inperson workshop on the 14th November 2025. The workshop will cover:
- the application process
- the role of supervisors
- the role of a mentor
- working in a research delivery environment
- how to create a personalised training plan
- obtaining support from within your organisation.
Q&A Sessions
In addition, there will also be two online Q&A sessions open for anyone to join to learn more about the programme and raise any questions and queries. These will be an hour in duration, 12pm – 1pm, and held on MS Teams.
The dates of the sessions are:
- 25th November 2025
- 9th December 2025
We would encourage you to invite your line manager who will be supporting your application to attend the workshop and/or the Q&A sessions if they are not familiar with this programme.
Closing date for online applications, 5pm 19th December 2025.