Nurses and Health and Social Care Professionals sit at the centre of multidisciplinary cancer care. They see where practice falls short, and they are well placed to lead research that translates directly into better outcomes for patients. In Ireland, that potential remains largely untapped.
Research consistently finds the same three obstacles: no protected time, no clear route to funding, and no mentorship. SOAR is St Vincent’s UCD Cancer Centre’s new pilot programme to answer all three obstacles, designed in collaboration with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute. It is delivered as one connected programme, rather than a series of one-off initiatives.
A trained cohort of research champions, drawn from public and private hospital settings, who give peer guidance to colleagues across the group.
An intensive train-the-trainer week for the champions, a co-delivered grant writing workshop, and an annual summer school open to the wider workforce.
Release-time agreements signed with line managers as a condition of taking part, and the programme managed within an established hospital research working group.
SOAR runs in cycles. Each cycle sets the ground, opens the work to the wider community, trains a cohort, and then keeps supporting them.
FOUNDATIONS
Recruiting and selecting the champion cohort, agreeing release time with line managers, assembling the academic mentor panel, and collecting baseline data on research capacity across the workforce.
RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
The programme’s public anchor event: keynotes, a showcase of local nursing and HSCP cancer research weighted toward early-career researchers, and an open invitation across public and private settings.
TRAIN → BROKERAGE → PRACTICE
An intensive train-the-trainer week for the research champions, a curated brokerage event matching clinical and academic colleagues around shared research questions, then a hands-on grant writing workshop that turns those pairings into actionable projects.
CLINIC, SUMMER SCHOOL, COHORT MEETINGS
The drop-in research clinic, monthly champion meetings, the annual research skills summer school, and a continuing symposium. This is the part that keeps the programme running between cycles.
A peer-led research drop-in clinic runs as a permanent part of SOAR, staffed on rotation by the trained champions and led jointly by an Advanced Nurse Practitioner and a Senior HSCP.
Sessions are scheduled slots, open to nurses and HSCPs at any stage of an application: how to turn a clinical gap into a research question, a question about a funding call, a draft to read, a budget to sanity-check. Where something needs senior research expertise, there is a clear route on to the academic mentor panel.
The programme’s anchor event, with keynotes and an early-career showcase.
Baseline and follow-up measures of research activity, confidence and barriers across the workforce.
Monthly cohort meetings, a shared resource library, and a volunteer panel of UCD academics.
SOAR is delivered in collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and University College Dublin, with support from the Fulbright Alumni Project Fund and the Irish Cancer Society.
SOAR is designed in collaboration with MSK’s Office of Nursing Research, which brings an established nursing research infrastructure to the programme’s design and delivers the train-the-trainer week.
UCD provides the academic mentor panel and the research expertise behind the training, the summer school and the evaluation.
Funds the train-the-trainer week, bringing Dr Margaret Barton-Burke from MSK to Ireland to equip the champion cohort.
Funds the SOAR Research Symposium, the programme’s annual anchor event.