Cooperation between professional education and clinical practice: process and experiences

Introduction and aim: Research collaboration across institutions is enriching, but also demanding. In this article, physiotherapists at a University college and a University Hospital, share experiences meant to ease collaboration processes. Main part: Seven years ago two physiotherapists at Oslo University College initiated a research collaboration with physiotherapists at Oslo University Hospital, department for rehabilitation and geriatrics. The starting point was a common interest for stroke patients and ankle-foot-orthosis, and the idea was to assess how specific muscles were affected using different orthosis during gait. Spontaneous changes in muscle activity were registered using EMG. To ensure that the topic was clinically relevant, a participative design was chosen. Taking part in a research-collaboration has been interesting. We have however met challenges, mainly due to different expectations, non formalized agreements and different time resources for research. Conclusion: Due to experiences, we want to highlight five issues that can promote research collaboration projects between learning institutions and clinical institutions: 1) Formalization of the research collaboration should start early 2) Discussing clinically relevant research questions should take place in an establish forum 3) Early clarification of expectations and shared responsibilities for different tasks 4) Resources and time spent for research need to be available for both parts 5) Developing research competence across institutions