Bridging the gap between research and practice: an assessment of the value of a study day in developing critical research reading skills in midwives

Abstract

Despite increasing professional pressure on midwives to make their clinical practice research based, there remains a considerable amount of clinical activity which relies only on historical ritual rather than on rational scientific evidence. This apparent failure to integrate research into practice has generated a lot of debate regarding its cause. One widely accepted reason for midwives' non-use of empirical findings is simply that a large proportion of the workforce does not have the knowledge and training in the necessary skills to enable them to assess the value of published articles. Clearly the cost in time and human resources involved in providing a thorough training for the entire midwifery workforce in research skills would probably be unnecessary for the majority of midwives who simply want to be able to translate published research into their clinical practice. Consequently, a more pragmatic approach might be to assess the value of brief training days in developing midwives' competencies in reading research articles critically as a precursor to facilitating the integration of theory and practice. If the value of such courses could be demonstrated, then it is conceivable that study days of this type might be made more widely available for all midwifery personnel. This study investigated the effectiveness of one such study day in (a) modifying the participating midwives' evaluations of a published research article in accord with those of expert judges and (b) influencing the longer term use by the participants of published research. The day provided a brief introduction to basic research techniques both in theory and in practice, as well as a set of structured guidelines for evaluating research articles. The findings with regard to both the above stated aims were highly significant, suggesting that brief study days are effective in developing midwives' critical apprasial skills in line with a set of specified, realistic criteria. While no information is currently available on the longer term impact of the training day of participants' use of research findings within their clinical practice, a follow-up survey of the participants suggested that their frequency of reading research had increased significantly (T = 18, p<0.005), they felt more confident about evaluating the articles (T = 0, p<0.005) and had identified current practices which needed to be reviewed in the light of their reading (T = 5.5, p<0.025). It is concluded that brief courses can facilitate the first stage in the research-into-practice process.