We read with interest the Boucher et al. article: “Frontline Clinician Appraisement of Research Engagement: ‘I feel out of touch with research.’”1 While often overlooked, community clinicians need to participate in primary care research. Here are some examples:
A family physician in Iowa discovered radon, not smoking, was causing lung cancer in her patients. A primary care doctor in a Canadian province found arsenic seeping into his community’s water supply from a mining operation was causing serious health issues. Because of research driven by patients and community clinicians, organizations mobilized to fix the underlying causes. Lives were saved! How was this done?
We are members of the Patient and Clinician Engagement (PaCE) community and committee of NAPCRG. PaCE employs a “dyad” model2 consisting of a patient and their primary care clinician, who predominately practice in community settings. It brings together community members not aligned with a particular research policy agenda and whose local influence is defined within the context of their community3. The research produced by PaCE projects reflects a community perspective, which increases the adoption and dissemination of meaningful research.
Via Pre-conference workshops at the NAPCRG Annual Meeting and periodic webinars, PaCE aims to share patient/community member and clinician engagement success stories (https://napcrg.org/programs/engagement-pace/patient-and-clinician-engagement-pace-program/), develop best practices, and create a community of knowledgeable participants.
We can’t stress the importance of community clinician engagement in primary care research enough. Remarkable results and more immediate uptake in communities occur when community clinicians recognize health challenges and enlist researchers to identify causes and find solutions. It also helps to reduce clinician burnout.
Patients and community clinicians don’t need to become expert statisticians or research methodologists. Partnering with researchers, they bring an understanding of community perspectives and priorities. Researchers often miss these perspectives and priorities as they focus on specific research questions and methods. Researchers alone may not recognize nuances of particular communities that lead to more successful and implementable outcomes. Every day, as we drive, the GPS systems we use to help us reach our destination need to connect with three satellites to ensure accuracy. Similarly, having the three distinct perspectives of researchers, patients, and community clinicians will navigate us to answering research questions that help patients.
PaCE strives to advance the practice of engaging non-usual suspects in research, stories, and methods to improve primary care research. To that end, we welcome your readers to join us. For more information, contact us at pace@napcrg.org.
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Conflict of Interest
There are no conflict of insterests for the article.
Footnotes
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References
- 1.Boucher NA, Tucker MC, White BS, et al. Frontline Clinician Appraisement of Research Engagement: “I feel out of touch with research.” J Gen Intern Med. 2023 Sep;38(12):2671-2677. 10.1007/s11606-023-08200-9 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
- 2.Sand J, Felzien M, Haeme R, Tapp H, Derkowski D, Westfall JM. The North American Primary Care Research Group's Patient and Clinician Engagement Program (PaCE): Demystifying patient engagement through a dyad model. Fam Pract. 2017;34(3):285–289. doi: 10.1093/fampra/cmx027.Erratum.In:FamPract.2017Aug1;34(4):504. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.Mason K, Martinez-Guijosa A. NAPCRG Patient and Clinician Engagement: From Idea to Program to Board Membership. Ann Fam Med. 2022;20(4):386. doi: 10.1370/afm.2853. [DOI] [Google Scholar]