NIHR Health & Care Professional (HCP) Internship Programme 2026

Applications are now open for the NIHR HCP Internship Programme 2025/26.

Do you have the drive and ambition to be a future research leader?

NHS R&D North West announce that alongisde 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. 

Eligibility

In order to be eligible for the programme applicants must:

• 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 it's services free at the point of delivery).
• be a health or social care professional registered with one of the approved regulatory bodies listed here.
• not already hold or be in the process of studying for higher degree research e.g. Professional Doctorate or PhD or equivalent. 

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.

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.  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.

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:

• 25^th November 2025
• 9^th December 2025

Closing date for online applications, 5pm 19th December 2025.