Chief AHP's blog
Date of release: 30 January 2024
Spotlight on Research
by Ros Leslie
It is well known that a research-active healthcare workforce contributes to improved quality of care, resulting in reduced mortality, higher rates of patient satisfaction and improved efficiency.
Furthermore, healthcare professionals who engage in research benefit from improved job satisfaction, resulting in reduced staff turnover.
On 26 January 2022, Health Education England (HEE) launched the first strategy focused specifically on AHP research and innovation – the Allied Health Professions’ Research & Innovation Strategy for England.
At RWT, this strategy was seen as a real opportunity for transformational change in AHP research.
We quickly considered how best to embed this strategy within our AHP services, while simultaneously benefitting the wider workforce.
Over this two-year period, we have implemented a multi-professional Community of Research Practice (CORP) – a network for staff to share research experiences and findings.
We have developed multi-professional educational workshops to upskill our staff and give them the confidence to engage with research.
We have an experienced team who lead Critically Appraised Topics (CAT) groups, producing short summaries of evidence focused on clinical questions.
And we also have an AHP Research Lead – Dr Ali Aries (PhD) – who is currently the Project Lead for our Clinical Research Network West Midlands (CRN WM)-funded Research ABC project (see my August blog).
AHPs from Black Country health and social care organisations attended a virtual training event organised by the Research ABC team earlier this month, with sessions planned around training needs identified by the initial Research ABC survey.
All professionals registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) are required to engage with research to meet the HCPC standards of proficiency.
Research is a core pillar of practice, however, the Research ABC survey demonstrated research outputs within our Black Country AHP workforce remain limited; yet, audit, service evaluation and quality improvement involvement are common.
It is important we recognise clinicians are, therefore, regularly applying the skills necessary for research in their everyday practice by undertaking these activities.
We need to encourage and celebrate these early research skills as they are essential to building the confidence to become research active.
If you perhaps think you are too busy to be involved with research, or don’t know where to start, just consider this: we all use our skills as ‘consumers of research’ – finding, reading, and evaluating the research behind our clinical interventions, policies, and procedures – to ensure we are delivering safe and effective evidence-based care.
The Research ABC survey identified more than 90 AHPs keen to facilitate research activity as ‘research champions’, and these people will be key in supporting development to help us grow a research-ready and research-active AHP workforce.
