How To Do Primary Care Research: (WONCA Family Medicine)

This practical ‘How To’ guide talks the reader step-by-step through designing, conducting and disseminating primary care research, a growing discipline internationally. The vast majority of health care issues are experienced by people in community settings, who are not adequately represented by hospital-based research. There is therefore a great need to upskill family physicians and other primary care workers and academics to conduct community-based research to inform best practice. Aimed at emerging researchers, including those in developing countries, this book also addresses cutting edge and newly developing research methods, which will be of equal interest to more experienced researchers.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Editors Contributors SECTION I: INTRODUCTION 1. What makes research primary care research? Felicity Goodyear-Smith and Bob Mash 2. Ontology and epistemology, methodology and method, and research paradigms Eric K. Shaw 3. How to choose your topic and define your research question William R. Phillips SECTION II: INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO PRIMARY CARE RESEARCH 4. Interdisciplinary research approaches in primary care Trish Greenhalgh 5. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods Elizabeth Halcomb 6. Authentic engagement, co-creation and action research Vivian R. Ramsden, Jackie Crowe, Norma Rabbitskin, Danielle Rolfe and Ann C. Macaulay 7. Development and use of primary care research networks Emma Wallace and Tom Fahey 8. Using big data in primary care research Daniel J. Exeter and Katherine E. Walesby 9. Conducting primary care research using social media Charilaos Lygidakis, Ana Luísa Neves, Liliana Laranjo and Luís Pinho-Costa 10. Quality improvement research in primary care Andrew W. Knight and Paresh Dawda 11. Programme evaluation in primary care Lauren Siegmann, Robyn Preston and Bunmi Malau-Aduli SECTION III: PRELIMINARY STEPS TO DOING PRIMARY CARE RESEARCH 12. How to prepare your research proposal Bob Mash 13. How to ensure your research follows ethical principles Christopher Barton, Sally Hall, Penelope Abbott, Chun Wah Michael Tam, Amanda Lyons and Siaw-Teng Liaw 14. How to search and critically appraise the literature Celeste Naude and Taryn Young SECTION IV: METHODS AND TECHNIQUES FOR DOING PRIMARY CARE RESEARCH 15. Taking stock of existing research: Approach to conducting a systematic review Taryn Young and Celeste Naude 16. Statistics in primary care research Richard Stevens 17. How to conduct a survey in primary care Lauren Ball and Katelyn Barnes 18. Validation studies: Validating new tools and adapting old ones to new contexts Sherina Mohd Sidik 19. Clinical and other diagnostic tests: Understanding their predictive value Sarah Price, Robert Price and Willie Hamilton 20. How to conduct observational studies Tibor Schuster 21. Randomised trials in primary care Gillian Bartlett-Esquilant, Miriam Dickinson and Tibor Schuster 22. Grounded theory David R. Thomas 23. Doing interpretive phenomenological primary care research Valerie A. Wright-St Clair 24. Why ethnography is an important part of primary care research and how it is done Carissa van den Berk-Clark 25. Case study Robin Ray, Judy Taylor and Robyn Preston 26. Interactional analysis of primary care consultations Maria Stubbe, Anthony Dowell, Kevin Dew and Lindsay Macdonald SECTION V: HOW TO DISSEMINATE YOUR RESEARCH 27. How to write and how to publish Felicity Goodyear-Smith and Katharine A. Wallis 28. How to create an effective poster Katharine A. Wallis 29. Using social media to disseminate primary care research Charilaos Lygidakis and Raquel Gómez Bravo 30. Reaching decision-makers and achieving social impact with your research Bob Mash, Nasreen Jessani and Liesl Nicol SECTION VI: BUILDING RESEARCH CAPACITY 31. How to supervise and mentor a less-experienced or novice researcher Elizabeth Sturgiss and Lena Sanci 32. Creating the right environment for mentoring to flourish Amanda Howe 33. A systems approach to building research capacity: Individuals, networks and culture Grant Russell 34. Including primary care research in clinical practice Chris van Weel Index

About the Author :
Felicity Goodyear-Smith is a general practitioner and academic head of the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. She and Professor Bob Mash co-edited the companion book to this current title: ‘International Perspectives in Primary Care Research’, CRC Press, 2016. She is Chair of the WONCA (world family doctors) Working Party on Research, and both books have been written on behalf of WONCA. She also chairs the International Committee of the North American Primary Care Research Group. Felicity was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Primary Health Care. She has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers as well as a number of books and book chapters. Felicity is passionate about the importance of research underpinning clinical practice in primary care. As well as her own research projects and those of her graduate students, she is actively engaged in research capacitybuilding globally, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This current book is particularly for emerging researchers, written as a ‘how to’ guide to conducting primary care research. Bob Mash graduated from The University of Edinburgh and trained as a general practitioner in Scotland before emigrating to South Africa in 1991. He worked in the townships outside Cape Town with community health workers, providing community based primary care in the final days of the apartheid era. Following the onset of democracy, he worked for 10 years in the public sector, providing primary care in Khayelitsha. During this period, he worked with Stellenbosch University to create the first learning opportunities in family medicine and primary care for undergraduate medical students. Subsequently, he also developed a new online master’s degree programme for the training of family physicians. He obtained his PhD on mental disorders in primary care in 2002 and has now published over 150 articles in peer reviewed scientific journals. He is currently the head of Family and Emergency Medicine at Stellenbosch responsible for research activities and training at both master’s and doctoral levels. He is the editor-in-chief of the African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine and is a rated researcher with the National Research Foundation. He is a founding member of the Chronic Diseases Initiative for Africa (a network of researchers) and an active leader within the Primary Care and Family Medicine Education (Primafamed) Network, a group of departments of family medicine in sub-Saharan Africa. He is currently the President of the South African Academy of Family Physicians.

Review :
"At a time when so many clinicians become overwhelmed with their everyday challenges and responsibilities, this book offers a respite to change one's thinking, expanding the scope in an additional area of thought. It is a well-written, easy-to-read text book brings a renewed thinking to research." Vincent F Carr, DO, MSA, FACC, FACP (Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences)