How can we better support pharmacy professionals to engage in research?

In this blog, Research Fellow Dr Hiyam Al-Jabr shares insights from the Pharmacy Research Engagement Programme (PREP), exploring barriers, solutions and what’s next for building a stronger pharmacy research culture.

1. Please can you introduce yourself and your role working on PREP?

Hiyam Al-Jabr: I am a Research Fellow in Epidemiology at Keele University, and a Senior Research Associate at the R&I department at Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust
(MPFT). My background is pharmacy, and I hold a PhD in pharmacy practice from the University of East Anglia (2020). Since completing my PhD I have been involved in conducting research projects with different healthcare professionals and service users across different healthcare settings, including randomised controlled trials conducted in collaboration with researchers and practitioners from the Netherlands, Australia and Canada.

I’m the lead researcher for PREP, which I conducted in collaboration with the pharmacy team at MPFT, particularly the pharmacy lead Sarah McAleer to carry out this service evaluation.

2. What is PREP, and how did it start?

PREP stands for Pharmacy Research Engagement Programme, and it aims to understand and investigate research culture, capacity and readiness of hospital pharmacy teams. PREP included two phases; Phase 1 included completing an online survey to investigate research capacity, capability and barriers to research engagement of pharmacy professionals. Phase 2 included in-depth interviews and focus groups to collect deeper understanding of barriers and facilitators to research engagement.

My journey with PREP started when I joined Keele University and MPFT in 2021 and became a member of the Centre for Academic Social Care, Public Health, Community and Primary Care (COSMIC) team, which comprises multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners. COSMIC team has led successful projects to enhance research engagement of different healthcare professionals (i.e., The Social Care Research EngagENt (SCREEN) project, and Public health Research Innovation anD Engagement (PRIDE) project). Thus, we decided to replicate this successful experience with pharmacy professionals, especially when considering the continuous calls to enhance pharmacy engagement in research.

The project started after discussions within the COSMIC team and collaboration with the pharmacy lead at MPFT. We managed to secure funding from the Research Development Network – West Midlands (RDN-WM) to support us conducting this project, which we conducted as a service evaluation. The pharmacy team at MPFT supported further collaboration with external Trusts to get involved in this project. Thus, we worked with the pharmacy leads at the participating Trusts to facilitate collecting data for PREP.

3. What local challenges have pharmacy professionals faced in engaging with research?

Several challenges were shared by pharmacy professionals, with many being expressed across the different participating trusts. We categorised these challenges under two levels: personal challenges (e.g., lack of research skills, knowledge and experience, lack of motivation, and not viewing research of being relevant to current role), and organisational challenges (e.g., lack of sufficient managerial support, limited funding, limited time and busy workloads, limited staffing, and lack of awareness about ongoing research opportunities). Of note is that the majority of participants who took part in PREP were pharmacists, with a minority of pharmacy technicians. Research was not sufficiently prioritised in practice, particularly to pharmacy technicians, who viewed research to be more relevant to pharmacists’ role rather than their role.

Additionally, what has also been highlighted of being important is that having a staff with time and role dedicated to supporting research (e.g., my role at MPFT) including completing data analyses and writing reports, manuscripts and presentations. Without this support it would have been more challenging with regards to enhancing pharmacy research engagement. Thus, having someone with dedicated time to support pharmacy staff, support various research related activities and apply for funding should be taken into account, as without it, clinical staff would not necessarily have the time to be able to do so.

4. Why is it important for Trusts to support this kind of work?

Through PREP, we were able to identify challenges to research engagement, and to identify facilitators to overcome those barriers to improve research culture within the organisation. Thus, we recommend other organisations to work with their teams to investigate this to understand their own pharmacy-related research cultures, as different organisations will have unique research culture needs and challenges. A strategic plan could then be developed by each organisation that would fit their own needs and resources to improve pharmacy engagement in research.

5. How can other Trusts learn from PREP?

Other trusts can learn from PREP regarding the challenges that could be encountered to research engagement. Although we anticipated many of these challenges and we expect other trusts to share many of these challenges as well, we were able to provide recommendations to overcome many of the challenges that are suitable to the organisation itself. These included several steps to be taken at different individual, team and organisation levels:

1. Individual pharmacy professional level:
a. Be proactive in identifying ongoing research within the organisation and research support provided,
b. Improve time management skills,
c. Improve communication about research using simple language.

2. Pharmacy team level:
a. Provide peer support and share research-related tasks where possible,
b. Share research-related experiences, e.g., attending a conference or taking part in research.

3. Organisation level:
a. Provide managerial support,
b. Enhance staff’s awareness about ongoing research and support,
c. Link research to personal and professional development and include it in the induction of new employees and appraisal meetings.

Other trusts would benefit from the recommendations that PREP provided, however, we highly recommend each trust to undergo their own assessments which may allow them to identify other challenges and recommendations that are specific to their own needs. More information about PREP can be found on our website PREP :: Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust.

6. What’s next for you and the PREP project?

PREP allowed us to identify several areas to be formulated into research projects. We are currently working on two projects that were suggested by pharmacy professionals who took part in PREP. The first project is looking at designing a framework for novice pharmacy independent prescribers (NPIPs project). The second project is looking at collecting patient feedback to hospital pharmacy services. We are also working on other research ideas, and we have applied for further funding to enable conducting these research projects. Through these projects we are encouraging more pharmacy professionals to overcome many of the challenges they expressed to research engagement, thus equipping them with research skills, knowledge and experience, which is expected to ultimately enhance research culture within the organisation. What we are also keen to develop, is to create a benchmark for checking research capacity and capability for hospital pharmacy professionals, not only for MPFT, but also for other organisations. We are happy for other organisations to use our Pharmacy Research Engagement Survey, and for them to share their anonymised data to help us create this benchmark for the different organisations across different time points. If anyone is interested in this, please let us know and we are happy to share our experience and offer support and guidance where possible. Further detail on PREP and other projects can be found on our website PREP :: Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust

7. What advice would you give to pharmacy professionals interested in research careers?

My advice to pharmacy professionals is to make an active step towards engaging in research. Research may seem to many as a mountain to climb, however, it is teamwork, and you will always be supported to do research. I would also encourage them to identify the research support and ongoing research provided by their organisations. Other things that were raised by PREP is for professionals to work on enhancing their research skills and knowledge through exploring research support services (e.g., those provided by the National Institute for Health and Care Research and Royal Pharmaceutical Society). We, at MPFT also offer the Supporting the Advancement of Research Skills (STARS) Programme. STARS is a free online research training and education programme run by MPFT Research and Innovation Department in partnership with Keele and Worcester Universities. It is appropriate for all staff at any stage of their career regardless of their research experience or professional background. Additionally, MPFT also provides a step-by-step guidance on every stage of the research process through the FutureLearn course: Starting Out in Health and Social Care Research. Thus, there are several existing opportunities to support pharmacy professionals in enhancing their research engagement, all what they need is to make the first step to understand and join research.