Real‐Life Research: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice

Research partnerships between ‘thinkers’ and ‘doers’ are now thought likely to deliver more useful and useable knowledge for health and social care. So far there is little guidance about making these academic/operational links work on the ground. We have used our own experiences of this approach, together with evidence from existing literature, to explore such partnerships. We conclude that, while they are fine in principle, it is difficult in practice to balance the twin demands of operational relevance and academic rigour. Such links may need rather different and better resourcing if they are to work properly.