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Hello OrangePink; I am a research nurse specialist here in UK and been doing the job for over a year now. Research Nursing is a very demanding role especially in my case anyway, my speciality area is cancer nursing, initially with a small team of Rare Tumour and then moved to colorectal. The Rare tumour involves very uncommon cancer and one of them is the skin condition called melanoma. So how I ended up doing research, well since I was in college I was totally smitten by this disciple; however, in Philippines, research nursing is not in anyway a popular subject. I've been in nursing for almost 20 years now and been around different disciplines in nursing and covered the countries of Philippines, Middle East and now UK. UK thankfully covers a great area of research, however, it took me 9 years to find the perfect opportunity to join the research team. To be a research nurse you need at least a year experience in nursing but I recommend that you need to have more experience in any areas of nursing before you join research. Why? in research you are highly autonomous most of the time. You almost dictate what should be happening in trials of course with the guidance of the protocol and your PI (primary investigator), however, just like I said if you are not with them, you almost call all the shots. Do you need MA degree? NO but it will definitely help you with the background knowledge. I do have my MA back in Philippines and acquired a different BA degree here in UK and now doing another MA course. If you want purely nursing research, you can do this anytime but these research are non-prescriptive as mentioned earlier by one of those who answered your question. Non-prescriptive in the sense that you won't be using experimental medicines because only doctors can do this unless you are allowed to prescribe just like what we have here, an advanced role called as nurse prescribers. Overall, research nursing is a very enjoyable, highly demanding but rewarding role, I would highly recommend it to all nurses who prefers a change of nursing discipline.........