NHS identity adaptation interviews
AURIS is inviting people with NHS experience to take part in a research interview about identity, role pressure, role change and what support can miss.
Before you decide
AURIS Institute is an education and research organisation. Taking part is not therapy, clinical treatment, medical care or crisis support. If your safety or daily functioning is affected, please use your usual clinical or occupational support routes, contact your GP or NHS 111, or call 999 in an emergency.
Why this interview strand is open
Healthcare identity is often discussed through burnout, retention and workforce pressure. AURIS is asking a narrower identity question: what happens to a person's sense of who they are when NHS work shapes them, changes them, or is no longer possible in the same way.
The interview is about identity adaptation: how work shapes a person, what changes when a role changes or ends, and what support does or does not notice. It is not a clinical assessment and it is not a review of an employer.
Who this is for
- People who currently work, or have worked, in an NHS role.
- Clinical, non-clinical, support, administrative, operational and leadership roles where the work shaped identity.
- People who have changed role, stepped back, left, retired, returned, moved teams, or stayed in role while feeling their relationship with the work change.
- UK-based participants, unless a separate research arrangement has been agreed.
What the interview explores
- How NHS work became part of your identity.
- What changed during pressure, absence, redeployment, team change, career change, retirement or leaving.
- What belonging, moral pressure, public expectation, hierarchy or team culture meant in practice.
- What support helped, what support missed the identity part, and what should be handled differently.
How the interview is handled
- Taking part is voluntary. You can stop, pause or skip a question.
- Do not share patient-identifiable information, staff-identifiable information or details that could identify a ward, patient, colleague or incident.
- Public writing uses patterns, not names, direct quotes, dates or identifiable case details.
- If the conversation raises clinical, safeguarding or crisis concerns, AURIS signposts to appropriate support rather than continuing as if it is research only.
Register interest
Email enquiries@aurisidentity.com with the sector in the subject line. You can ask for the participant information before deciding whether to take part.
The wider research programme is listed under current research and published outputs are listed under publications.
Interested in the research?
AURIS welcomes careful, sector-aware conversations that help test and strengthen the evidence base.