Practitioner-Based Research

This book is concerned, in particular, with the research which is undertaken by healthcare practitioners and the evidence which they generate as a result of investigating their practice. In so doing it recognizes that, as well as working in academic life, practitioner researchers are often working as practitioners outside the Academy. It argues that the work of practitioner researchers has a signifi cant contribution to make to healthcare research and so needs to be disseminated further in order to create balanced research communities within the healthcare professions. It takes the view that the work of practitioner researchers has a contribution to make to the work of all people involved in healthcare helping academic researchers to broaden the limited ontological and epistemological perspectives of their research. It can also encourage healthcare practitioners who have not been trained academically to develop their research skills and to realize that they are actually researching into their practice on a day-to-day basis. Finally, it can provide a degree of transparency about therapeutic processes to help clients and patients to see aspects of professional practice and development which are usually hidden from them. The contributors cover a range of themes which address the above issues, such as the limitations of academic life and conventional medical models, ethics, the importance of imaginative writing and the use of story, metaphor, myth and the importance of personal transformation in the professional development of healthcare workers and the relevance of belief and spirituality to healthcare research.