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Before discussing how my work will be disseminated, it’s important to understand the Building Research Capacity in Community Hospitals (RICH) Canada initiative and how RICH-CPD fits in. RICH Canada is a program led by Dr. Jennifer Tsang and Dr. Alexandra Binnie that aims to increase the participation of Canadian community hospitals in healthcare research, advocacy, mentorship and knowledge translation initiatives. More information about the program can be found via this link. The motivation for the program is to address the gaps in health research data created by a concentration of research and scholarship in urban academic health science centres. The RICH program has several facets, including a Community Hospital Research Toolkit and the RICH Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program. For my part, I was the digital content developer who worked with several subject matter experts to create the RICH-CPD modules.
For the purpose of my consulting project, the audience of my results will be narrow, and it’s unlikely that they will be broadly disseminated. However, this does not mean the work will have no impact. The fundamental purpose of the RICH-CPD program is to provide accessible education resources to community hospitals and clinics to be able to engage in health research. My consulting project will focus on how the RICH-CPD program has changed clinician practice and identify potential gaps or challenges in the current program to inform future development and revisions to its content. For my work, my audience will likely be the leadership and subject-matter expert team overseeing the RICH-CPD program.
An interesting fact about the RICH-CPD program is that, while designed with Canadian community hospitals in mind, it has begun to be shared globally under a Creative Commons license, with a specific focus on lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The project was recently presented at the “Building Global Acute Care Research Capacity” conference in Kigali, Rwanda, where it was well received. Finally, the RICH team was the recipient of a $250,000 PSI grant to support a three-year study exploring how Ontario hospitals can improve patient care and outcomes through strengthening their health research and scholarship activities.
That is great that the RICH-CPD program is picking up interest around the world. The grant news is fantastic, as well. You’re fortunate to have the opportunity to be a part of it. I am excited to see where it goes.
Meanwhile, in Alberta…
Fantastic news on the way the program is being picked up elsewhere. Creative commons licenses really are a marvelous thing. It’s fully understood that the dissemination of the results will be a more narrow route given that it’s the DLCRP.