Martin Marshall | Professor of Healthcare Improvement | UCL
Most people involved in improving care for patients would like to think that their decisions are influenced by the best possible research evidence. Most academics would like to think that their research has an impact on patient care. But too often neither of these aspirations are realised.
Academic research is often difficult to access, hard to use and sometimes fails to address the questions of greatest importance to practitioners. One of the reasons for this is the traditional separation of researchers working in the ivory towers of academic institutions, and clinicians and managers working in the swampy lowlands of front line health services.
The Researcher-in-Residence model being developed by UCL Partners and others in the UK, is designed to address this challenge. Experienced researchers work as members of operational teams, sharing responsibility to address practical problems by negotiating their scientific expertise alongside the expertise of front line practitioners.
The nature, origins and development of this model will be described in this presentation, together with practical examples of its use in the UK and an assessment of its merits and challenges as a way of promoting evidence-informed service improvement.