Questions either answer a clinical question or they answer a research informing question. So the question “will education of GP’s reduce prescribing of antibiotics for acute bronchitis” is the former. “Do Low Income Children in Rural Areas Have Different Access to Health Care?” does not appear to have direct high clinical impact but the findings would inform more research that certainly would have an impact. There is a complancency, maybe in the minds of journal editors, that research just happens. As you know this is not the case and every element of the study needs to be well informed from rather boring incidence data that determines sample size to validation of the outcome assessment tools. Each of these are as of equal importance as the final paper that shows the ‘clinical benefit’. NAPCRG is there to provide a forum for all these stages of research as well for the people at the different stages of research career. It’s size allows us to encompass this in a way that many conferences do not.
I would argue that focusing on what really matters is like looking at where the ball (or puck as I now watch more hockey than football) is now. What NAPCRG provides is a forum for people to suggest where the puck is going to be. Yours sounds like an argument for responsive research that would stifle the basic and innovative. Using that approach we might still be treating people with PPI’s for their peptic ulcers rather than with antibiotics. Other less dramatic questions that might have been unanswered might have been “why do apples fall” “what is this fungus contaminating my petri dish” and “what is this fuzzy interference on my tv screen”
This rather unstructured response is to argue that as long as the question is new, and that it is answered well, who knows the impact it may eventually have.
Lets follow this up while eating some tremendous cuisine in Montreal at NAPCRG November 2009.
Martin