Here - Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Editorial
– the outcome of that crucial encounter
may have already been partly and
significantly determined by what the
patient experienced in the waiting room.
Something the doctor may not just be
unaware of, but may be usually beyond
their control.
Qualitative research has a long and
respectable history in Anthropology and
Sociology, though it may be sniffed at by
medical colleagues; it’s just an example
that other methodologies are available
to us as research tools. You don’t need a
high tech brain scanner to accomplish
something meaningful. It should not be
forgotten.
Here are some possible research
questions that I would be interested in
assisting any staff member with
conducting some kind of project, or
which I believe others in the Trust may
want to pick up.
Why do patients complain and what is
their experience of the complaints
process? What leads to higher patient
satisfaction after a complaint? What is
the experience of the staff members
who have been the subject of a
complaint? What is the impact on them
psychologically or in terms of the way
they practice medicine afterwards?
What is found most helpful by GPs in
letters from Secondary Care clinics.
What do they dislike the most in our
letters to them? What impact do our
letters have on care? What about a trial
of different kinds of letters?
When a patient first hears that a GP is
thinking of referring them to a
psychiatric services – what is their initial
reaction? How does the encounter with
services alter that?
When trainees start psychiatry what are
their expectations? How does doing a
psychiatry placement alter this?
Part of the new Trust journal could be
devoted to throwing out research ideas
and seeing who wants to collaborate
over conducting. Part of the week could
be set aside for doctors in the Trust to
meet in order to discuss and assist with
research projects.
Remember as well that publishing
doesn’t have to be restricted to
publishing research – letters to journals
can often be surprisingly influential. A
good place to start in your research
career is by submitting some letters. For
that you must be aware of the literature
and eventually dialogues and
collaborations may develop. before you
critique it and then eventually dialogues
and collaborations often develop out of
such initial correspondence.
Colleagues could get together and
submit more letters to journals - drawing
attention to the implications of various
research findings on clinical practice
where we work?
These are just questions – I don’t
pretend to have the answers.
But all great research at least starts with
a good question.
This is not as good a paper as I had
hoped. It was done rather quickly and
under difficult circumstances. But it
might stimulate you to think of doing
research.
Remember, if you predict you’ll do, you
are more likely to do it.
8 Surrey and Borders Online Journal www.sabp.nhs.uk/journal