Dr Rebecca Angus1,2, Dr Shelley Roberts1,2, Mr Scott Plumbridge-Jones1, Dr Rachel Wenke1, Dr Kelly Weir1,3,4
1Gold Coast Health, Gold Coast, Australia, 2Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia, 3University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia, 4The Royal Children’s Hospital, Parkville, Australia
Biography:
Dr Rebecca Angus is an Accredited Practising Dietitian with Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service. She is a research specialist employed to support development, conduct and dissemination of health services research, and to build research capacity in allied health clinicians with a view to enabling best-practice patient care. Her interests are in nutrition care, allied health model of care evaluation and research capacity building strategies within health services.
Abstract:
Background:
A research culture is associated with improved performance in healthcare organisations. However, individual and institutional barriers to clinician investigator-initiated research include lack of time, funding, infrastructure, research skills, confidence and guidance. To address these, across 2020-2022 our health service seconded two rounds of allied health (AH) clinicians into temporary, part-time discipline research officer (DRO) roles with a remit to support research culture development within their departments, whilst simultaneously conducting their own research project(s). Now complete, we aimed to evaluate the DRO program’s effectiveness in building health service research capacity and culture.
Methods:
This mixed methods study used internal documentation and research database searches alongside pre- and post-intervention research capacity and culture (RCC) surveys and semi-structured interview of AH professionals to evaluate the program against Cooke’s six principles of research capacity building in healthcare.
Results:
Fourteen clinicians were appointed to DRO roles, two each from audiology, dietetics, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology, social work and speech pathology. There was evidence of research capacity gains for all DROs, and across all seven AH discipline departments. Individual, departmental, and wider outputs and impacts were mapped to all six principles – 1) building skills and confidence; 2) developing linkages and partnerships; 3) ensuring research is close to practice; 4) developing appropriate dissemination; 5) investments in infrastructure; and 6) building elements of sustainability and continuity.
Conclusions:
A DRO program employing AH clinicians from within a health service is effective in building research capacity and culture, to thus, ultimately, improve healthcare performance and patient care.