Primary care is a rapidly growing academic branch of learning and developing its own body of research is the hallmark of a maturing academic discipline. This practical guide is the first designed specifically to support those planning, conducting and disseminating primary care educational research. While research informs clinical practice, organisation of primary care services and teaching the discipline, educational practices and modes of delivery are rapidly changing, particularly in response to new information technologies. Primary care practitioners must be engaged in life-long learning and keep abreast of developments in many arenas and educational research into how to address this has thus become of paramount importance.

Key Features:

• The first ‘how-to’ guide to designing, conducting and disseminating primary care educational research
• Focus on inter-professional education, co-design and participatory research approaches, in line with current primary care models of care involving inter-disciplinary teams
• Wide in scope, exploring the current research environment in the contexts of undergraduate teaching, postgraduate training, continuing professional development, and patient education, for academics and educationalists at all levels
• Step-by-step introduction to the processes of literature review (establishing the existing knowledge base), choosing a topic, research questions and methodology, conducting research and disseminating results
• Supported by the WONCA Working Parties on Research and Education

This book will encourage and upskill academics at universities and institutions teaching primary care in both undergraduate and postgraduate settings, providing support and guidance on how to conduct their own research and evaluate their own programmes, and will help to grow academic research in this discipline in high and, importantly, also low- and middle-income countries.

1.Introduction
2.The theoretical underpinnings of primary care educational research
3.Underpinning medical education research with the discplines of sociology and psychology
4.Co-creation and participatory processes in medical education research
5.Educational research and policy-making
6.Scope and Research Environment
7.Integrating primary and secondary care educational research
8.Primary care interprofessional educational research
9.Research on patient education in primary care

10.Finding out what is already known: how to develop a literature review
11.Choosing your topic and defining your research question
12.Choosing your methodology to answer your question
13.Ethical issues for primary care educational research
14.Validity and reliability in primary care educational research
15.Quantitative study designs
16.Big data in primary care educational research
17.Social media and the internet in primary care educational research
18.Use of Delphi technique in educational research
19.Qualitative methods
20.Action research
21.Case study research
22.Individual interviews and focus groups
23.Content analysis: a guide for primary health care education researchers
24.Ethnography
25.Doing a mixed methods research or evaluation project
26.Applying methodologies to the curriculum: researching curriculum development and delivery
27.Programme evaluation
28.Researching the informal and hidden curriculum
29.Mentoring: how to support and mentor early researchers in educational research
30.How to develop critical mass and ensure primary care educational innovations and initiatives are evidence-based
31.Intercultural aspects in primary care educational research
32.Disseminating your primary care educational research
33.Future challenges in primary care educational research
34.Conclusive remarks