National healthcare policy aims to grow and support the conduct of research for the benefit of patients and staff in the UK. The purpose of policy itself is to drive practice in clinical organisations and to enable leadership, implementation and translation of both research activity and consequent results into clinical practice.
There is a gap which is not yet understood between the intentions of policy and the ability to undertake Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Profession (NMAHP)-led research successfully or at all. There is an anecdotal perspective that policy which is in place favours medics over other professions, however this too has not yet been explored.
To date, a review of research policy linked to NMAHP-led research is absent from the literature. Exploring the history of healthcare policy and content could enable some understanding of the dichotomy between the intentions of policy and its impact in practice. The view is this work is the foundation to future workforce related research.
