Describing the evidence-base for research engagement by health care providers and health care organisations: a scoping review.

Abstract

Background Having a research-engaged health and medical workforce is associated with improvements in clinical outcomes for patients. As such, there has been significant government investment internationally to support health care organisations and services to increase staff engagement with research. This review sought to provide an overview of the literature relating to strategies employed to increase research engagement by health care providers and organisations and apply a qualitative analysis to generate a list of research engagement strategies. Methods A scoping review using systematic search processes was undertaken to locate peer-review publications and grey literature related to ‘research engagement by health care providers and organisations’. A database search of electronic records was performed with no limit on publication date. Publications examining research engagement were included regardless of study type and categorised as either databased (presenting data or new analysis of existing data) and non-databased (no new data or analyses). Databased publications were further classified according to study type, study design and setting. A qualitative synthesis of all other studies using a Framework Approach were undertaken with studies that described an intervention to improve research engagement. Results A total of 161 publications were included in this study with 52% categorised as not presenting new data. Of the databased articles, the majority (68%) were descriptive studies describing prevalence of correlates of research engagement, 21 described intervention studies (28%) and of these, only two were controlled studies. The following strategies were used to facilitate research engagement; dual skilled team/staff, resources or physical infrastructure, incentives, leadership support of research, education/training, networks, forming partnerships or collaborations and overall leadership structure of entity. Conclusions The literature on research engagement is primarily opinion-based and descriptive in nature. There is a need for future research to progress beyond descriptive to more rigorous well-designed intervention research, to provide the evidence needed to support ongoing government investment in creating a research engaged health workforce.