Practice-based Research in (allied) healthcare

1.3 What can you learn from practice-based research?

While working on an (interprofessional) research or innovation project, you may also discover how expanding your knowledge can lead to the better execution of your own professional practice. Expanding knowledge While working on their final thesis project, students of the Dental Hygiene, Dental Prosthetics and Speech-Language Therapy programmes work together to answer questions from healthcare professionals in care homes about the care for and advice to residents who are experiencing difficulties with eating and dental hygiene. By combining their various professional perspectives to answer these questions, the students also learn how they can benefit from each other’s expertise and when they should collaborate with other fields in the performance of their own profession. The following example illustrates how you will not only improve your research competence for a professional context while working on a research project, but also your professional skills. Developing multiple skills Podiatry student Tijmen finds it difficult to assess the pronation of a patient’s feet during walking. To his relief, this topic was not covered in his exam. During his final thesis project, however, his fellow students and he are tasked with assessing the pronation of the feet of all test subjects. He is very worried about this while preparing for the project. He decides to talk to his client about it. They explain to him that a high degree of inter-observer reliability (see Section 3.5.2) is very important for the project. This means there will be plenty of time to practise how to assess the pronation of a patient’s feet and coordinate the assessments of the different student-researchers. By the end of the project, Tijmen has not only further developed his research skills but also improved his ability to assess the pronation of a patient’s foot.

The following example illustrates how you not only develop specific professional skills while working on a research project, but also learn to apply the theory.

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