Strategic Workforce
Supporting our partners with recruitment
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What is the Strategic Workforce?
The Strategic Workforce is a team of experienced research nurses and clinical research practitioners who can assist with recruitment duties. Support is agreed for a fixed time period to help our partners meet their targets. The team support studies across all specialties, including commercial and non-commercial research.
Eligibility for support
- Requests can be made for any study on the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) Portfolio
- Study is delivered by a partner organisation of the CRN North West London
- Support is related to study recruitment
Priority may be given to studies that are nearing the end of recruitment but still need to meet their target.
What our partners say about the Strategic Workforce
“We worked with the Strategic Workforce on a few commercial sickle cell studies over the past few years. We were lucky to have an excellent research practitioner and a research nurse allocated to our studies, while we were struggling to recruit band six research staff (maternity cover and vacant role). They integrated with the team seamlessly, were professional, proactive and real experts in research delivery.”
Camelia Vladescu, Team Leader, Non-Benign Haematology Research Team, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
June 2023: “Recently we have encountered staff shortages in the HIV and GU Clinical Trials Centre at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, due to staff moving on. Although in the long term we will be able to recruit new members of the team, this has left us unable to deliver some research studies at the current time. Studies include the RIO study, assessing broadly neutralising antibodies as a novel treatment from HIV and DORDOL, assessing a novel dual antiretroviral therapy approach in persons with HIV.
“The Strategic Workforce was able to provide a research practitioner during this time of staff shortages which allowed us to continue to deliver these important HIV therapeutic studies.”
January 2021: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, north west London was a key player in undertaking and delivering vaccine studies. At Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, we ran the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine trial and recruited over 350 individuals. Without the assistance from the Strategic Workforce, delivering a study of this magnitude would not have been possible.”
Professor Alan Winston, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
How to request support
Complete the Strategic Workforce request form to be considered for support. The form should take around 15 minutes to complete.
Get in touch
If you have any queries, please get in touch: nwl-resource-requests@nihr.ac.uk