Building links between town and gown: an innovative organisation in south-eastern Melbourne

Abstract

Primary care is the foundation of a nation's health care system. Real world research is a requirement of a health system built to deliver the benefits of a strong primary care community. In the last decade, new approaches to optimising the impact of research on practice and policy have been formulated across disciplines. However, in Australia, the primary care research community remains small and primary care researchers are not well represented in either receiving support for or governing research. While practice-based research networks (PBRNs) have brought GPs and, sometimes, other clinicians together with academics, few have managed to bring local decision makers and other primary health care stakeholders into partnerships where they can work together on common problems. This paper outlines a novel three-way partnership between a health authority, a primary care organisation and a university in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. A case study was undertaken based on author experience of the Southern Academic Primary Care Research Unit (SAPCRU) and semi-structured interviews with representatives from partner organisations. Interviews elicited perceived barriers and facilitators, including complex financial, human resources and governance challenges, associated with bridging the gap between research and practice. It was found that SAPCRU has been successful in engaging with research partners and has begun to develop links with policy makers and orient research themes to the needs of its varied communities. Especially with the introduction of Primary Health Networks (PHNs), the model has the potential to translate to different settings but barriers should be noted.

Challenges and strategies for conducting research in primary health care practice: an integrative review

“…Conducting a study with the length of time necessary to meet the needs for the transformation of health services is a difficult task, since managers and decision-makers may have more immediate expectations and hope for quick solutions to their problems [ 8 ]. To overcome this limitation, it is important that all stakeholders (managers, patients, health professionals, and researchers) are involved in the study, mainly to facilitate the understanding of the steps that one study needs to go through until its publication [ 9 , 18 , 38 ].…”

Challenges and Recommendations for Conducting Research in Primary Health Care Practice: An integrative review

“…Conducting a study with the length of time necessary to meet the needs for the transformation of health services is hard task, since managers and decision makers may have more immediate expectations and hope for quick solutions to their problems 7 . To overcome this limitation, it is important that all stakeholders (managers, patients, health professionals, and researchers) are involved in the study, mainly to facilitate the understanding of the steps that one study needs to go through until its publication 9,31,33 .…”

“…For that reason, researchers must remain attentive and updated to identifying funding opportunities. 31 Health care services produce every day a large volume of data. Information about health care procedures, prescriptions, patients' pro le, and all sorts of interactions between the patient and its healthcare provider.…”

“…In this domain are combined a series of challenges related to designing a research plan, such as developing and re ning a research question, designing a strategy for data collection and data analysis, writing and submitting a proposal for the ethics board committee and the amount of time it takes to get the approval to start the project. 7,9,19,20,22,31,34,40 The time needed to carry out and conclude a study is often very different from the amount of time needed to make decisions in health care. Conducting a study with the length of time necessary to meet the needs for the transformation of health services is hard task, since managers and decision makers may have more immediate expectations and hope for quick solutions to their problems 7 .…”

“…When used appropriately, these real-world data can generate new knowledge from the practice to improve patients' care. 31 Relationship Between Universities And Health Services Some studies highlighted the strains of integrating universities and health services 7,30,23 . The distance between these two scenarios can be explained by several factors: (a) the fact that academic priorities may not re ect the needs of the communities 7 ; (b) weak connections between academia and primary care services 30 ; (c) the lack of a mutual agenda between them combining common interests; 32 (d) the distance between researchers and health professionals; 7 (e) the restricted access to speci c research training courses ran by universities, apart from formal master's and doctorate courses 23 .…”