Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Facilities, Volume 27, Issue 3/4
It is encouraging to see the Facilities journal dedicate a special issue focusing on healthcare-related FM and estates research. The FM-related research is clearly becoming more rigorous in its approach and therefore gaining creditability in its own right. Conducting FM-related research in healthcare is,I believe, a particular challenge for two reasons. First, FM practitioners,academics and professionals are competing with other research active individuals and groups in the healthcare arena who are generally accepted (bar one or two occasional high profile cases of ethically bad research) to be conducting the gold standard of empirical investigation. The randomised, double blind,controlled trial is almost the bastion of scientifically sound research. Quite often people conducting healthcare-related research outside these boundaries either feel inadequate in comparison, or are made to feel inadequate by others– both of which are wrong.
Leading on from this is the second challenge. This is being able to design or construct research studies that not only are scientifically valid, but also are viewed as being valid by the wider healthcare research community. Research teams cannot deliberately serve bad food to a particular ward and compare it with a ward where good food is served, nor can they practise poor cleaning standards in a medical centre and compare with a centre that receives a top cleaning regime. It is not just the practical complications, but also the ethical reasons that set hurdles in the way.
However, these challenges also provide an opportunity, which could be to learn and adapt, although not necessarily copy, the approaches to research taken by other healthcare-related disciplines.
All the papers in this journal strive to add to the growing FM healthcare evidence base. In addition, there is a trend towards the technical end of the FM spectrum, although caution needs to be exercised in the way in which results and conclusions are presented. In order to raise the profile of FM through the scientific evidence base, the people responsible for delivering the research and presenting the findings should carefully consider the language used. Those accountable in healthcare and making decisions want to know the contribution services can make to their organisation, in this case the wellbeing of the patient. Therefore, if facilities managers want to prove the contribution of their services to those in the boardroom, then they need to talk in a language that holds currency. This, I believe, is through their ability to demonstrate the difference that FM services can make to patient wellbeing.
Daryl MaySheffield Hallam University, UK
