My doctoral journey

Dr Martine Harris graduated from the University of Bradford in 2003 with a BSc Hons in diagnostic radiography and, after a couple of years working in plain film, she moved into CT.

“CT always interested me because it was fast paced and exciting and you still had the elements of trauma and acute care,” she says.

After gaining a postgraduate certificate in CT in 2006, Dr Harris eventually wanted to progress her career on a more academic footing so found herself moving down the road to Wakefield.

“I wanted to do a master’s degree but Bradford didn’t offer one. I moved to Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals in Wakefield in a Band 6 role because I knew it was a forward-thinking trust and I might be able to develop myself in the long run.”

Clinical research methods

In 2013, she began an MSc in clinical research methods as part of a programme run by the National Institute of Health Research, which backfilled 50% of her clinical role.

“I’ve always been interested in audit and service evaluation – what we are currently doing, how can we make it better and generating the evidence of how that looks in practice,” she says.

“Research had always been on my radar but I never thought it was an option as a career. This was about developing real understanding and knowledge of how I might go about developing evidence, and that excited me.”

The MSc, which was awarded in 2015, was “very much the catalyst to getting into research as a career”. She adds: “I was lucky to be at Mid-Yorkshire because it had been working to develop a research radiographer post, which was a substantive post.”

Dr Harris has been in that post ever since but she also works CT hours in her own time to keep up her clinical skills.

Image credit: Dr Martine Harris

“I think it’s really important that you’re still able to have your ear to the ground,” she explains. “There are developments all the time in technology or the processes we use.”

She continues: “As a CT radiographer you’ve got to be on your toes all the time. You’re the first person to view the images so there’s an element of technical appraisal and clinical decision making. It’s really important that radiographers are developing those skills. You need to know what to do next, whether that’s to escalate to a radiologist or to go on and complete further scans for the patient.

“You don’t want the patient to have to come back and have more injections of X-ray dye. And you also don’t want to delay their diagnosis.”

Such interests led Dr Harris to the subject of her doctoral research. “That was what prompted me to do my PhD, which was about developing a competency framework specifically for
CT radiographers,” she says. 

“We have several professional and regulatory-body frameworks that set out the standards for practising as a radiographer. However, there was nothing I could find that pointed to the technical and clinical competencies required for CT radiographers and assistant practitioners at career level frameworks four to eight.”

She conducted a staged study using multiple methods to develop a competency framework that articulated the roles of assistant practitioners and qualified radiographers of different expertise levels.

“Not only does it identify what we need to know when we first start working in CT but it also sets out the development opportunities, leadership and specialised practice at higher levels such as six, seven or eight.”

A champion for research

Dr Harris is keen that the profession continues to embed research as one of its core activities. 

“You need to ask yourself: how do I collaborate with other people and start to generate some data and start to implement the evidence?

“There are ways you can start to do that quite easily. There is a clear pathway from audit to research so just starting to gather a little bit of data as part of an audit identifies where there is a problem. Using a range of survey methods, you can then go outside your trust to see if other people have solved this problem or if it is a problem everywhere. Based on that, you can ask ‘what is the answer?’ and then test the answer. All of a sudden, you are in the realms of developing research.”

Having successfully negotiated the not inconsiderable hurdles of completing her thesis, Dr Harris’s enthusiasm and passion for the radiography profession remain at the heart of what she does.

“It’s so exciting to be a part of research as a radiographer,” she says. “There as so many ways to be involved. By investing in radiographer research skills and experience we are developing the ideas, writing the papers and leading research. Now we’re writing the papers, we’re disseminating and leading that research. It’s just mind blowing.”