What does studying research methods have to do with practice? Views of student midwives and nurses

At the point of registration, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) requires nurses and midwives to prioritise people; practise effectively; preserve safety and promote professionalism and trust (NMC, 2015). In order to practise effectively, registrants must ‘always practise in line with the best available evidence’ (NMC, 2015:7) both in terms of their skills and competencies as well as the evidence on which their practise is based. As University Lecturers teaching on pre-registration nursing and midwifery programmes, a key aspect of our role is to ensure students appreciate the link between research and practice; understand how gold standard care is based on best evidence and realise that by studying research methods during their programme of study they are actually developing higher order skills of critical thinking and decision making – highly transferable skills for safe and effective clinical practice; commensurate with graduate level programmes of study.