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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Med.

Sec. Healthcare Professions Education

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1584904

This article is part of the Research TopicDistributed Training and Rural Health Professions EducationView all 10 articles

Mechanisms to Build Research Capacity in the Rural Health Workplace: a Realist Synthesis

Provisionally accepted
  • The University of Sydney, Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Workplace-based research training contributes to research capability and capacity in rural areas where access to university expertise is limited. Rural health complexities and the diverse approaches previously used to build research capacity have led to a lack of clarity about how to build research capacity within rural health services. Using a critical realist foundation, we explored distributed workplace-based rural research training and synthesized five studies centered in rural New South Wales, Australia. Critical realism allowed the exploration of the structural supports and barriers for workplace-based research training activities and the ability of individuals to pursue research activities within rural health workplaces. The component studies showed that distributed rural research training programs improve individual research capability by developing research skill, increasing research experience and facilitating research networks across sectors. Rural research activities are characterized by individual agency and partnering or relationships to access support and expertise. Structural barriers including a lack of operational planning for research and few ongoing research opportunities limiting translation of capability into research capacity. Individual workplace-based research training is effective, but not sufficient to build and maintain research capacity. Structural supports such as organizational commitment and careful training design can maximize cooperative partnerships with education partners. Addressing both structural and individual factors is needed to build rural health research capacity and generate real-world health research to drive meaningful improvements in rural health.

Keywords: Distributed training, research education, Rural Health, Workplace-based education, Realist synthesis

Received: 27 Feb 2025; Accepted: 02 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Schmidt, Webster and Lyle. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: David Schmidt, The University of Sydney, Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia

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