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Clinical research by GPs in their own practices

2009; Royal College of General Practitioners; Volume: 59; Issue: 561 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3399/bjgp09x420464

1478-5242

Nigel Mathers, Amanda Howe, Steve Field,

Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues

We enjoyed reading Julian Tudor Hart's typically iconoclastic contribution to the March Back Pages. We do share with him some of his concerns about Research Governance and the delays that ethical review can cause to the initiation of research studies. The variability in the outcomes of ethical review is well known and to a certain extent this is to be expected since two committees may come to different conclusions about a study, although both are acting ethically in accordance with the priority they place on the different ethical principles.1 However, the Department of Health has made considerable strides in recent years in harmonising the process of ethical review although it does remain a complex, laborious, and tedious process well known for delaying the start of individual research studies. There have been moves in recent months by the National Research Ethics Service to streamline the process further, and these have been supported by the RCGP. However, we think that just as healthcare teams have got larger and cross-practice collaborations have become more important, the impact of single practitioner research studies are limited: they are mainly of value to the researcher rather than making a substantial contribution to the expansion of the evidence base for our care. Such research has considerable benefits for the practitioner, the practice, and the patients but rarely results in a major contribution to the sum of our clinical knowledge – indeed one wag has described clinical research done by individual GPs in their own practices as ‘occupational therapy for doctors’! …