The research enterprise stems from various motivations: enjoyment of intellectual challenges, curiosity about a phenomenon or process, or a desire to understand how to improve upon a current reality. Health care management as a practice discipline ultimately focuses on improvement of processes and situations in order to achieve the organizational mission of care delivery and attention to health. In an ideal world, health care managers could turn research that satisfied intellectual challenges and curiosity into changes that lead to improved health care management and enhanced health care delivery. Unfortunately, even research into how to make improvements rarely becomes the needed practice changes. Furthermore, the focus of implementation science too rarely takes into account the monumental role that health care management and organizational variables play in changing clinical practices.
Last summer at a major national conference, I was struck by the disheartening reality that, as researchers, we know so little about the value added of our research to management practice. I had several conversations in which we scratched our head (figuratively and literally) in an effort to identify specific research that we could say had changed health care management practice. Those conversations included phrases like "his research was really important, but I can't think of an organization that has used it," "that line of research is really strong, but only on the academic side," and "surely that engaged research has to have been used elsewhere." Those conversations ended with us looking down, shaking our heads, and vowing to find some research that had been used by health care managers.
I'm keeping that vow. Currently, Health Care Management Review (HCMR) requires that authors give readers suggestions on how to translate their research into management practice. Whether and to what extent those recommendations are heeded is unknown. My guess is that health care managers are using research; we just don't know which research and what was required to make the research usable. In the near future, HCMR will start publishing brief reports (1200 words or less) in which a researcher and a practitioner together explain what studies or theories were used to improve health care management practices. These "Research Into Practice" briefs will not only identify which research was used but also share lessons learned while making the journey from academic knowledge into daily health care management practice. These briefs will go through our usual peer review process, with at least one reviewer being in practice.
My hope is to have at least one "Research Into Practice" brief published in each issue of HCMR. At the moment, this feels like an ambiguous goal, better known as a stretch goal. Meeting this goal requires that researchers dialogue with health care mangers in their backyards, in their volunteer circles, and in their friendship networks. I challenge HCMR readers, authors, and reviewers to develop and submit a "Research Into Practice" brief. The Instructions to Authors will be revised by the end of October 2015 to include details and requirement for submitting the "Research Into Practice" brief. I look forward to implementing this changes and learning what difference our research had made and is making.
L. Michele Issel, PhD, RN
Editor-in-Chief