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Research in Practice

Colin Campbell
by Colin Campbell on 22/12/19 18:00

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About 3 and a half years ago, we introduced Dr Kath Hare to the practice to formalise and develop a small research component to the business that we have to try to make us better and to try and help us share what we thought was some aspects of best practice with other areas of the profession.

This was always going to be a difficult project, because we are an insignificant tiny player in a massive marketplace of research.

But we stuck with it and learned as much as we could as we travelled the journey to here.

It is probably though a misnomer to call this a research department.

First of all, it is not actually a department and secondly what we do is to measure things that we already do, which are well established and have been done many times and we instinctively think work through the numbers that have been carried out.

That is all to give a difference to “trying” a new technique or a new product.

One of the areas in which my speaking dentists has developed is to start to ask the question “who should be researching the new products? Who should be researching the new techniques?” it seems pretty clear that this is not guys like us, at the front line of treatment in practice.

The problem exists where we all feel the necessity to create a competitive advantage by doing something different and at times, we think something different is the same as something new.

We see a technique that someone presents to us at a conference or a study club or talks to us about it at a meeting, or worse on a quick disposable online platform, to decide, to try and practice.

Usually and almost all the time, this is the worst of us and not only is it destined to fail, but it will harm someone or more than one in the process.

I was on the other side of the equation 3 and a half years ago, around the time that we set up the research department.

I went to see an orthopaedic surgeon about a pain in my leg when I was training for an Ironman triathlon and on the same day I was scanned and diagnosed with arthritis in my left knee, which stopped me from running forever.

During that consultation I was booked to have private surgery with the same surgeon for approximately £13,500 to provide a disk transplant in my left knee in an attempt to hold off the progression of my arthritis.

On further questioning the surgeon told me that he had carried out 8 of these procedures previously and on further discussion with the physio therapist I saw, she was very clear that she did not feel that I should take that procedure, but it was clear that she didn’t think that she would be able to have that conversation with me or she would get into trouble.

Certainly 3 and a half years ago, meniscal (disk) transplants should have been carried out in trial centres on well informed consented individuals, treatment by groups, but the commercial world is in too much of a hurry for that.

If you don’t have the time to meticulously investigate a new procedure that you want to bring into the practice, then stick with what you know and what we know and what we know works.

 

Blog Post Number - 2224

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Colin Campbell
Written by Colin Campbell
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