Capabilities in research and scholarship

Why this matters on day one

The clinically useful skill is not conducting research but reading it: knowing whether a paper should change your practice, and being able to explain a risk to a patient in numbers they can use.

What the domain requires

1. 1Appraise critically. Study design and its hierarchy, bias, confounding, sample size, and whether the outcome measured is the one that matters to patients.
2. 2Interpret the numbers. Absolute versus relative risk, number needed to treat, confidence intervals, sensitivity, specificity and predictive values — and how prevalence changes the last of these.
3. 3Understand governance. Research ethics approval, informed consent for research, GDPR and data handling, and the difference between research, audit and service evaluation.
4. 4Apply it. Translate evidence to the individual in front of you, including when the trial population does not resemble them.

What evidencing it looks like

• A critical appraisal, ideally presented at a journal club.
• Participation in a research project or service evaluation, with your specific contribution stated.
• Good Clinical Practice training where relevant.

What falls short

• Quoting relative risk reduction to a patient, which systematically overstates benefit.
• Treating a surrogate outcome as though it were a clinical one.
• Confusing audit with research and taking the wrong approvals route.

Demonstrated by