Ellen McIntyre, PHC RIS, Lyn Brun, WA PHCRED, Helen Cameron and David Lyle, Broken Hill UDRH
 A survey was recently conducted to examine the extent to which the Researcher Development Program (RDP) has impacted on knowledge, attitudes and practice in relation to research and evaluation. RDP fellows (appointed between 2005 and 2009) were invited to participate.
The response rate was 41% (105/258). Most participants were female (88%) with 66% aged between 31 and 50 years. Fellows were either based in a university department of general practice (UDGP, 57%) or a university department of rural health (UDRH, 43%). Over two thirds (68%) were health practitioners with the most common disciplines being GPs or nurses.
There was much diversity in the amount of time spent working on the RDP fellowship, with the most common (47%) being one day per week for between 20 and 104 weeks. Only 52% of the participants agreed/strongly agreed that this was adequate time to complete the RDP work.
Activities undertaken during the RDP ranged from literature reviews, developing a research question, ethics submissions, attending conferences and seminars, presenting at these events, preparing papers and reports, and submitting grant applications.
Most (94%) agreed/strongly agreed that the RDP was a valuable experience with outcomes including presentations, publications, and changes in clinical practice. Indeed, 89% expressed interest in undertaking further research in the future.
These RDPs were located around Australia in urban, rural and remote areas which further extends the reach of this program to enable future research and evaluation to be conducted in these settings.
These results indicate that this program has achieved its aim – to increase the number and range of people with knowledge and skills in primary health care research and evaluation.
Acknowledgement: We thank Jocelyn Morris (RDP), Frances Boreland (BHDRH), Parker Margin (UoN), Nick Zwar and Melanie Marshall (UNSW) for the development of the original survey that they used in NSW/ACT and we used in the other states. We also thank them for allowing us to pool their data with ours for this analysis.
The full report is available at <www.phcris.org.au/publications/catalogue.php#727>
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