Clinical scholarship is an integral part of everything we do in General Practice. It is our professional capacity to use and generate knowledge in everyday practice to enhance patient care. Whatever your portfolio of practice roles - be they patient-focused, education, research, quality improvement, leadership and others - you will be actively involved in knowledge work on a daily basis. What these roles have in common is the Bananarama principle: it's not what you know that matters, but how you use what you know.
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We have spoken with many GPs, trainees and students. You have told us that you want to develop your knowledge work skills. But often you don’t know where to start. We have pulled together a number of resources to help. Click on the links below to find out more.
Getting started in clinical scholarship
Developing your ideas and gaining further training
Progressing in General Practice scholarship
Sharing scholarship and getting advice
Getting started in clinical scholarship
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Whether you are a student interested in quality improvement or a career in research or an experienced healthcare professional looking to enhance your clinical practice or develop your portfolio role, everyone has to start somewhere. A personal and professional responsibility of being a healthcare professional is being able to understand and apply knowledge to help solve the problems presented by the patient in front of you. This requires an ability to ask the right questions, find the appropriate evidence, appraise this evidence in a way that is rigorous and place it within the context of the patient.
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EBM is the model of knowledge work for practice that we are traditionally taught and is an important and useful skill. However, there is growing recognition that it is insufficient for much of the everyday practice that we do.
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What is evidence based practice?
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The Knowledge work of every day generalist practice
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Knowledge work for extended practice: How to start a new project?
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Do you have a dangerous idea? - Click here
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What is a good question to ask - Click here
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How to write a research question - Click here
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How to ask a good question - Click here
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Looking for project ideas - Click here
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Getting started in research – Click here
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Hear stories from others who have got involved in research – Click here
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This NIHR video gives an overview of how to design a project – Click here
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Click here to find out about how others do knowledge work in General Practice
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Scholarship skills are relevant to everyday clinical practice too, find out how here.
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BMJ Article on communicating risk - Click here
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Communicating evidence - recent BJGP paper - Click here​​
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Involving patients in General Practice scholarship is vital and it is useful to engage Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) representatives at each step of your project. See our Patient pages for more information on how to do this.
Developing your ideas and gaining further training
You may have already started your project, or you may be part of a research active General Practice team who are keen to explore how you can develop your ideas further. Making connections with like-minded people in General Practice scholarship is an invaluable way to learn and develop your portfolio of skills. A growing proportion of healthcare professionals have extended portfolio roles that use enhanced scholarship skills. A smaller proportion of GPs work as academic GPs - clinicians with advanced training in research and/or education skills to enable them to take up formal positions within Universities. There are many different ways to gain further training in scholarship skills as well as getting involved with academic training at all stages of your career.
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Training for academic clinical careers
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Making connections
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Progressing in General Practice scholarship
Scholarship skills are wide and varied, and there already exist a number of fantastic resources and courses to develop your expertise in research, education and quality improvement activities. See the WiseCareers pages for more information on training and courses.
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A good place to get started and expand your ideas is through Quality improvement. QI aims to make a difference to patients by improving their safety, effectiveness and experience of care. It involves applying a systematic approach to designing, testing and implementing change in real time using measurements for improvement. Audit, similarly prioritises patient safety and the effectiveness and experience of care, but measures practice against performance. These are skills that trainees are encouraged to learn early and are valuable throughout your career. These form part of scholarship, which includes not only using external knowledge but also creating and analysing new information to improve patient care.
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Below are some resources to help you gain the skills for all aspects of scholarship.
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​Some ideas for topics to focus your project on are included in our GEMS library – see GEMs professional development ideas - Click here
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The RCGP QI ready pages are also useful for QI project ideas - Click here
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University Hospitals Bristol guides on how to perform clinical audit - Click here​
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Bradford VTS examples of audit/ QIP activities - Click here
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Reviewing the existing literature is an important skill to inform the development of your ideas.
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CRD guidance for undertaking reviews in healthcare - Click here
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How to make sense of a Cochrane systematic review - Click here
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​​Learning how to read journal articles can be great and the @GPJournalClub on Twitter is a great place to start to understand how to critically appraise scientific papers relevant to primary care - Click here
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Having an understanding of epidemiology and statistics is a useful tool for clinical scholarship.
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Sharing scholarship and getting advice
Scholarship is a team activity and sometimes you just need to talk with someone about your ideas.
Members of the Society for Academic Primary Care working in departments of academic primary care around the UK can offer advice and support for your scholarship. Perhaps you are looking for someone you can talk through some general ideas - to find out more about what opportunities are available locally. As listed above, each academic department has an WiseAmbassador who would be pleased to hear from you. Why not drop them a line and start a conversation? They will help you make links with people locally and nationally who can help with your ideas.
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​Perhaps you are planning or working on a specific project or idea, and really need to speak with an expert in that field to help develop your ideas further. We have a growing directory of people to help you. To chat to an expert, click on the list here for contact details or use our GEMs pages to find the experts and the work they are doing.
You may want to find other Primary Care healthcare clinicians who are doing similar work to you, or get involved with an organisation local to you who promote scholarship in General Practice - keep an eye out for our WiseConnections page for opportunities to connect.
Sharing scholarship with other academics, front line clinicians and patients is what it is all about and means you can directly influence improvements in General Practice. Disseminating your findings in the form of journal articles might seem daunting, but there are now so many opportunities to share your ideas and outcomes, and also seek future collaborators. This journey is part of becoming a leader in General Practice scholarship.
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How to tell others about your work
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Why do we need to share our ideas - Click here
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Get more confident in academic writing with courses at University of Leeds - Click here
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This NIHR video also has some great writing tips - Click here
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Take some inspiration from Dr Aftab who writes blogs - Click here
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Read some of our very own WiseGP blogs - Click here
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