This time, we’re speaking with Dr Sam Irving. Sam is a clinical academic postdoctoral researcher and clinical scientist. She’s also an Associate Director for KCATO, representing professions allied to healthcare including allied health professionals (AHPs), healthcare scientists, pharmacists and psychologists. Her own research focuses on small airway assessment in children with respiratory disease.

Could you give us a brief summary of your route into a PhD, including previous research experience?

My research very much grew out of an observation I made in clinical practice. For some of our young patients with rare disease, their clinical lung function results did not seem to match their symptoms. I didn’t know why this was, and when I approached our senior leads, they didn’t know either, so it became clear the only way to find out was to carry out some research. I’d always liked the idea of doing further study, as my undergraduate degree contained a large research module, and so I was delighted when one of our senior professors offered to supervise my PhD to try and find the cause of the results we were seeing.

For me, it was very important even at this stage that my research was based on my clinical work. I did the PhD part-time over 6 years, so it was a pretty big commitment, and if this wasn’t a topic I felt passionately about clinically I think it would have been much harder.

What are your long-term ambitions for your clinical academic career?
My current focus is to gain further fellowship funding for the next stage of my career, establishing myself as an independent researcher. I’ve recently been awarded an NIHR Senior Clinical and Practitioner Research Award (SCPRA), and during that time I’m going to be putting together the protocol for a large multicentre study looking at lung function in children with bronchiectasis, a rare lung condition. This will take me out of my comfort zone as I’ve never led anything this big before, but I’m excited and I’m up for the challenge!

I don’t think I’ll ever want to give up clinical work entirely though, I really do think my best research ideas are driven by my clinical practice, and my research work makes me a better informed and more effective clinician. I can’t imagine now not having both these strands to my work.

I’m also passionate about my role with KCATO. I feel very strongly that clinicians doing research is life changing, both for them and for their patients, and making sure our brilliant people have the support they need to become clinical academics is so important to me.

What tips would you give to a clinician embarking on an out-of-programme research project, such as a PhD or MD(Res)?
We talk a lot about resilience and how necessary it is for a clinical academic career, as there are always going to be disappointments. But I don’t think we talk enough about how you develop and build that resilience. It’s so important that you have a good, supportive team around you, both your immediate supervisors but also colleagues and mentors that will help give you that sense of community that we need to really thrive. Make sure you maintain some work-life balance - no-one does their best work when they are exhausted and burnt out, and the support of our families and friends is so important to stay well. Many funders will now offer the opportunity to continue with some paid clinical work, and for me staying in touch with my clinical colleagues and my patients is really important to stay focused on why my research work matters.

What support has been most helpful to you in terms of navigating your clinical academic career to date?
I can’t really overstate how important mentorship has been to me. I’m lucky that my original, very inspiring PhD supervisor has become a mentor figure to me, but I’ve also benefitted from the skills, expertise and advice of several other very brilliant academics and clinicians as I’ve progressed throughout my career.

I don’t think there’s any one recipe for mentorship success, my relationships with mine are as different from each other as they are. But they’ve all helped me better understand how to best navigate the complexities of a clinical academic career and I’m very grateful to all of them.

What is the most rewarding thing about being a health professional researcher?
Realising you’ve improved care for patients beyond your own clinical sphere of practice. Ultimately, as clinicians there’s only so many patients we can see over our careers, regardless of how hard we try. But if you carry out research, design and publish what great care looks like for your patients, then patients you’ll never meet in centres you’ve never even visited will still benefit from your best practice. And that’s so rewarding.