How can healthcare organisations increase doctors’ research engagement? A scoping review

Abstract

Clinician engagement in research has positive impacts for healthcare, but is often difficult for healthcare organisations to support in light of limited resources. This scoping review aimed to describe the literature on health service-administered strategies for increasing research engagement by medical practitioners. Medline, EMBASE and Web of Science databases were searched from 2000-2021 and two independent reviewers screened each record for inclusion. Inclusion criteria were that studies: sampled medically qualified clinicians; reported empirical data; investigated effectiveness of an intervention in improving research engagement; and addressed interventions implemented by an individual health service/hospital. Of the 11,084 unique records, 257 studies were included. Most (78.2%) studies were conducted in the United States, and were targeted at residents (63.0%). Outcomes were measured in a variety of ways, most commonly publication-related outcomes (77.4%), though many studies used more than one outcome measure (70.4%). Pre-post (38.8%) and post-only (28.7%) study designs were the most common, while those using a contemporaneous control group were uncommon (11.5%). The most commonly reported interventions included Resident Research Programs (RRPs), protected time, mentorship, and education programs. Many articles did not report key information needed for data extraction, (e.g. sample size). Despite a large volume of research, poor reporting, infrequent use of robust study designs and heterogenous outcome measures limit application of these studies and prospects for future systematic reviews/meta-analyses. The most compelling available evidence pointed to RRPs, protected time and mentorship as effective interventions. Further high-quality evidence is needed to guide healthcare organisations on increasing medical research engagement.