TWEETCHAT: Not enough time for research?

May 13, 2019 admin Uncategorized 0

The fifth #ResNetSLT tweetchat of 2019 will take place on Wednesday, 29th May 7.30-8.30pm (UK Time).

The chat will be hosted by Sophie Chalmers (@SChalmersSLT) and Millie Heelan (@heelan. milly) and will be based around this paper: Not enough time for research? Use of supported funding to promote allied health research activity by Rachel Wenke, Kelly A Weir, Christy Noble, Jill Mahoney, and Sharon Mickan. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6016580/pdf/jmdh-11-269.pdf

This paper reports on an evaluation of a short-term, supported funding initiative that allowed staff from AHP professions to undertake research activity within rostered employment time.

The paper uses literature to highlight the benefits of clinician-led research on patient care and successful translation of findings.

The paper describes some of the current barriers that limit AHP’s ability to undertake research within a clinical role:

  • Lack of time, skills, resources, team and organisational support, and organisational structure
  • Prioritisation of clinical work ahead of research activity
  • Lack of clinical backfill

The funding initiative was implemented in the following way:

  • Open to all AHPs (based in Gold Coast Hospital and Health Services)
  • Initial interest was expressed via 1 page application
  • Successful applicants received 4-weeks (full time equivalent) of funding to enable clinical backfill
  • Eligible research activities included: writing an ethics application, analysing data, systematic review, writing up research
  • Successful applicants were paired with a research fellow for mentorship and advise on implementation planning

Following the funding initiative, the following outcomes using ‘individual research capacity’, ‘satisfaction’ and ‘research output’ themes were identified:

  • Improvement in literature searching skills
  • Securing funding
  • Analysing qualitative data
  • Writing for publication
  • Providing advice to less experienced researchers
  • Improvements to clinicians’ confidence
  • Setting foundations to build internal research capacity and culture within teams
  • Importance of having an implementation plan from the outset
  • Some clinicians did not use all of the funding due to difficulties finding backfill

The authors concluded by recommending that having an implementation plan was a useful facilitator to the effectiveness of the initiative. Avenues for seeking clinical backfill were suggested to be explored further, for example integrating research activity into job descriptions and development plans. Creative use of funding was also suggested to assist in clinician productivity and outcomes should be closely monitored.

The following questions will be discussed during the tweetchat:

  1. What is your experience of either funded or dedicated time to research activity within a clinical role?
  2. What are the current barriers to conducting research activity in a clinical role and how might these be practically addressed? Please share any experience of addressing these barriers.
  3. As per the ‘funding initiative’ described in the paper, what research activity do you think could be practically achieved within a 4-week period? What might be included in an ‘implementation plan’?
  4. How might clinicians be able to advocate for funded time/dedicated time for research activity in the workplace?

HERE’S THE SUMMARY OF THE CHAT …

May’s tweetchat was certainly fast paced with a huge involvement from clinicians and academics from a range of backgrounds contributing to the conversation. Here we have summarised the key themes from the chat and provide an overview of responses to the questions asked on the night:

  1. What is your experience of either funded or dedicated time to research activity within a clinical role?

There was a consenus from individuals that a dedicated fellowship can offer much needed funding and dedicated time for research. It was recognised that backfill can often be difficult and require careful planning, particularly in specialised posts. For HEE/NIHR programmes visit: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/our-research-community/NIHR-academy/nihr-training-programmes/nihr-hee-ica-programme/

Many commented on the lack of dedicated time/funding available by their trusts but offered alternative avenues such as engaging in post graduate learning, attending research forums, ‘research link’ roles, RCSLT research champion roles, seeking out charity funding (@anna_westaway gave an example of: https://laureltrust.org.uk/ ). Methodology, designing staff questionnaires, organising training, data analysis and literature reviews could be achieved with dedicated time for research activity.

 

  1. What are the current barriers to conducting research activity in a clinical role and how might these be practically addressed? Please share any experience of addressing these barriers.
  • QI and audit can be good ways of making first research steps (recruitment, data collection, working with finance and procurement, literature reviews, critical appraisal, project planning) and can be classed at research if done to achieve academic qualification.
  • Create a mini research champion team or forum to share ideas, information and enable research capacity; obtain a service level ethos to support research
  • Create links with universities by enhancing already established links such as student placement coordinators, CEN memberships, RCSLThub days
  • Create time to read the current state of knowledge: NHS Athens, RCSLT members access to journals, NHS trust library services, monthly research bulletin, contact authors if you can’t get hold of an article.
  • Become a ‘Research Champions’ https://www.rcslt.org/members/research/become-a-research-champion or contact @katie_chadd
  • Find a clinical academic mentor via RCSLT by filling out the form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfeC1wfz8tilLeJdzwfNo_y19j_ICf2M3Gp3boviOIGpOMR7g/viewform
  • Link in with CENS and RCSLThubs to help connect with others
  • Cultivate backfill in advance and promote as a development opportunity
  • ‘Creating practice based evidence’ is a good resource to develop knowledge: http://www.jr-press.co.uk/creating-practice-based-evidence-2nd-edition.html

 

  1. As per the ‘funding initiative’ described in the paper, what research activity do you think could be practically achieved within a 4-week period? What might be included in an ‘implementation plan’?

It was interesting to see that individual’s experiences were similar to the findings of the paper, demonstrated that even with a small amount of time, research activity could be achieved. For example: writing up a study for publication, presentation, small funding application, systematic literature review, audit, service innovation projects, carefully designed single care studies which can lead to case series. One specific example of an implementation plan was: Week 1: Question and evidence gathering; Week 2: run a small pilot project/data collection; Week 3 and 4: review data and measure impact.

 

  1. How might clinicians be able to advocate for funded time/dedicated time for research activity in the workplace?