The Research Spider

1
The Research Spider

• Liz Farmer Karin Ried
• PHC RED Program, Department of General Practice,
  Flinders University
• with acknowledgments to R Waters, K Weston, T
  Udell

2
Research Need

• Primary Health Care discipline
• Mant Report (1997) need for a sound evidence
  base derived from high quality RD
• Wills Report (1999)
• need to undertake research and to integrate
  research based knowledge into policy and practice
• approach to capacity building in Australia
  fragmented
• Australian research output
• Ward et al. 1999 550 articles between 1990 and
  1999 (GPs or researchers in GP field), 41 of
  research was purely descriptive
• Askew et al. (2001) Publication rate of one GP
  (discipline) article per 1000 GPs in practice per
  year. Corresponding rates for medicine, surgery
  and public health were 105/1000, 61/1000,
  148/1000 respectively.

3
Research in Practice (1)

• Silagy Carson (1989) 26 (n1116) some
  previous experience with research. 33.7 a lot
  of interest in participating in research

• Askew et al. (2002)

Table 1 Respondents involvement in general
practice research (n 467)
4
Research in Practice (2)
Table 2 Respondents attitudes to research
(Askew et al. 2001)
5
Capacity Building

• Barriers to research Individual lack of
  research leadership, lack of research training or
  experience, attitudes to research (Silagy
  Carson 1989, Jones et al. (2003)

• PHC RED Strategy Aims to embed a research
  culture in Australian GP PHC
• Practitioner involvement
• leading
• participating
• utilising
• Models for building research capacity and culture
  in GP PHC (e.g. Chew Armstrong 2002, Farmer
  Weston 2002, Shah et al. 2002)

6
Research in Practice Culture Change

• Continuing calls for improvement
• Silagy Carson 1989, Askew et al. 2002
• Most GPs have been educated and trained with in a
  system that reinforces the authority of clinical
  experience.
• Younger respondents and more recent graduates
  were more likely to have a positive attitude
  towards research.

7
The Research Spider

• a simple method of assessing research experience
• Smith et al. Primary Health Care Research and
  Development 2002 3 139 - 140

8
Emerging Themes

• Research spider (Smith et al. 2002, WReN)

Experience? 1 no experience 2 little
experience 3 some experience 4 moderately
experienced 5 very experienced
Interest? 1 no interest 2 little interest 3
some interest 4 moderately interested 5 very
interested
9
Flinders PHC RED Applications

• Member survey
• Registrar survey
• Supervisor survey

10
GP Registrar Survey

• Timely
• GPET established in 1998
• 22 Regional Training Providers (RTPs)
• National curriculum - RACGP
• No formal research training component
• Diversity/fragmentation in RTP training programs
• Changing demographics of Medical Graduates
• GEMP programs (ANU, Flinders, UMelb, UQ, USyd)
• ? Masters, PhD etc. qualified generic research
  skills

11
Survey of Australian Basic Term GP registrars

• Survey comprises 4 sections
• Demographics
• Research Experience
• Research Development and Training
• Future research involvement
• Administered by RTP representative.
• Anonymous response (as stipulated in ethics
  approval)
• Provide de-identified results to RTPs and GPET,
  compared against national findings.

12
Research Experience
GP Registrars
13
Interest in Up-skilling
GP Registrars
14
SARNet Member Survey

• Demographics of respondents

15
SARNet Member Survey
Research experience and interest in up-skilling
16
Conclusions

• Research spider is simple and effective
• Visual interest for respondent and reader
• Smith et al random sample 97 members (68
  responded)
• 82 good or very good summary of research
  experience
• 88 easy to complete