New research discoveries are exciting but how do you take those findings and put them to work in a hospital or clinic?
Figuring that out will be the top priority of the new Northern Health – UNBC Knowledge Mobilization Research Chair. Dr. Martha MacLeod has been appointed to the position, which will focus on putting research findings and knowledge to work in rural health care settings.
“The second priority will be doing research on what kinds of research approaches work best at translating knowledge in rural settings into practice in rural settings.”
But she says her work could benefit urban centres as well.
“One of the early findings that I had about how nurses work together in teams and how nurses learn in practice was picked up by Toronto General hospital and put into practice. But we learned that in northern BC.”
On the flip side, Dr. MacLeod says she already has her eye on neonatal programs developed in urban settings. She wants to find out how to make them work to benefit mothers and babies in rural areas
She says translating new findings into working programs for rural areas – something she says can be quite challenging.
“A good example is about research that is created in an urban setting that presumes that the people who are going to implement it are specialists, like specialist psychologists, for example. But there’s no specialist psychologists in rural communities.”
The new position is being supported through $250,000 in matched funding from the BC Support for Patient-oriented Research and Trials Unit.
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