Professor Doris Young, Dept of General Practice, University of Melbourne
When it was finally my turn to spend a few months reading, reflecting, discussing and planning ie. taking a sabbatical (Sabbath = rest), where better to take that kind of study leave than Oxford , where learning is the raison d'être of the city. The three and a half months leave from July-October 2005 was based primarily in the Department of Primary Health Care, University of Oxford, one of four primary care institutions with a five-star rating in the UK Higher Educational Funding Council Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the others are General Practice/Primary Health Care Departments in Cambridge, Birmingham and Manchester. I was able to gain insight into their modus operandi and the effort they put in to build research capacity and increase research output.
There were some notable differences between the UK and Australian PHC research endeavours in the content and extent of their research expertise, funding support to build research capacity and the high value GPs in the UK put on academic activities such as teaching and research.
In building research capacity and expertise, there are strong collaborations in the UK of PHC researchers with public health and clinical specialist researchers and much cooperation with National Health Service (NHS) Primary Care Trusts who also funds research practice networks, some of their facilitators co-locate with academic Departments and share joint appointments.
Academic activities such as teaching and research are valued and supported by NHS, with teaching support from the NHS SIFT fund (Service Increment For Teaching) and research core through NHS Research and Development Programmes and the enviable five-year Primary Care Clinical Scientists awards. Through hard work and tough competition via RAE, our UK primary care academic colleagues have gained esteemed peer recognition and a number of them have obtained Medical Research Council (MRC) five-year program grants in their expert themes resulting in timely publications in high impact journals influencing practice and policies.
Finally, to make all this possible, the culture of research permeates through to practicing GPs, many of them have research interests and skills in clinical themes supported by research infrastructure from their regional research practice networks.
I believe that the journey to achieving esteem and expertise in General Practice and PHC research in Australia is just beginning and on the right track!
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