Allied Health Insights Vol.2, No.9: Perspectives on Research Capacity Building in Allied Health
Research capacity building (RCB) is crucial for allied health professionals as it enhances their ability to provide evidence-based care and drive advancements in the field. Research allows AHPs to explore new treatments, interventions, and technologies, leading to improved patient outcomes and enhanced quality of care. Active engagement in research can contribute to the development of best practices and evidence-based guidelines, strengthening the credibility and effectiveness of their disciplines.
Following our recent spotlight on Patient & Public Involvement in research (PPI), this week we’re moving the focus to research capacity building, sharing some articles that deal with RCB in allied health from several points of view: from the ‘front line’, in a low resource context, and from a management perspective.
Featured in this edition
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7 Ways To Be A Research Enabling Manager: How can allied health managers foster an environment conducive to research capacity building? Managers are central to the organisational research culture and climate, but not all have research skills, knowledge, or experience. Consequently they may lack the confidence to support research activity including research translation. We show that managers don’t need to have PhDs or be experienced researchers to support a positive team and organisational research culture.
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5 Lessons I’ve Learned From Building Research Capacity in Allied Health: Allied health research capacity building is a long game, where collaboration and responsiveness are key. Monash University allied health researcher Dr Olivia King reflects on the last five years of her work in research capacity building, sharing some of her key learnings. This work has spanned the academic, health service, and academic health science centre settings, where she has primarily collaborated with allied health and other healthcare professionals working in regional and rural settings.
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Building Research Capacity In Low Resource Settings: Health organisations that have greater research capacity and activity are more likely to perform evidence-based practice and deliver evidence-informed health messages to patients. Many research capacity building initiatives, however, assume a level of resourcing in health organisations that, sometimes, is just not there. We look at multi-level approaches for building research capacity, what resource-poor settings look like, and the strategies that can be used to build capacity in these types of settings.
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Kickstart Your Allied Health Clinician-Research Career With a Mentor: We engage in mentor partnerships for different reasons over the course of our allied health careers. Mentors are particularly helpful when we are contemplating or making changes in our careers or learning new skills. If you’re just starting in research, now is a great time to engage a research mentor.
