Students expressed that they don’t feel they have the skills to conduct research and would be more confident later in career to 'step up', when they know what areas they want to specialise in. They feel like they would need lots of experience before conducting research. Staff also expressed the opinion that students often lacked research skills particularly around data manipulation that often forms the core of research outputs.

“Shadowing would be really good we can like put it on a CV or our placement application and it would show like an employer that we actually have interest in what we're applying for”

Lack of role models or people who are or have conducted research was seen as a barrier. This lack of role models was particularly seen in clinical research and in staff that the students can directly relate to. Access to academics to conduct and talk about research was also seen as a barrier.

“I don’t feel any academics think they’re too important to reply they are usually just busy.”

“For me doing research is about improving the care we are giving, are there better ways of providing care… making a change”

Staff commented on the challenges that academics faced to engaging in research-informed teaching. These included external time pressures, such as needing to research current papers in areas where they were not necessarily the expert and unaware of current developments in the field.

Staff expressed the option that students did not understand the concept of research in that there is no right or wrong answer and the research itself was the generations of knowledge. Research was seen as scary due to the lack of a definitive right answer.

Students state that they are unable to interact with research literature due to the complex discipline specific language that is used in research publications. From the staff point of view this was voiced as a lack of fundamental knowledge required understand core concepts.

“I am not the fastest of learners and it takes me a significant amount of time to understand things”

“Sometimes you'll see a topic you're like I don't know what the words in this mean”

“I was clicking on articles I didn't have a clue what half the words meant”

Finding information with databases is a skill that needs to be developed within students. Many are unaware of the availability of databases and then how to search them for key information. Staff also identified literature searching as a key missing skill.

“In my case it was where to find things. I only really had experience of using google scholar and I didn’t have the necessary skills or knowledge to find things.”

“It took me a while to figure out where the filter even though it's like just on the left-hand side

Knowing what is required within academic research outputs is a key skill and often as set rules around creation and presentation that the students are unaware of. Statements around not knowing what was expected in a research output or how to construct one, formed a major theme. The ability to assess information for its inherent value and critically against other information is felt as a barrier.

“We have never really been taught what a literature review is”

Access. Outside of placements there is little opportunity to experience research directly. Students note that final year projects and dissertations do however give the opportunity to put learning into practice. Staff note that students seem less willing to undertake placements and hence gain the experience that they need.

“If you don't want a placement year then there's like not much help to try and get experience anywhere else”

“I'd probably really benefit from that and being able to sort of either shadow or take part in some research in first year”

“I think its confidence of being involved in projects and gaining transferable teamwork and communication skills.”