Research in response to local need.

In entering the higher education arena, nursing and midwifery has had to contend with a number of challenges. Centre stage is the inherent tension between the maintenance of both academic/professional and practice/service based foci. While few would dispute that research activity with local service partners can act to enhance nursing care, a strong argument can be made that the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) has had a disproportionate effect on the research activity of academic health care departments. In this paper, Julie Taylor and Stewart Cable set out to explore the tension in detail by examining the opportunities and challenges of undertaking small scale, often severely time-constrained but locally grounded, studies. Their article draws on a portfolio of recent projects undertaken by themselves and outlines the benefits and challenges that such activities can generate.