International reflections on NAPCRG: celebrating 50 years of learning and connecting

Mental refreshment As academic primary care researchers, we are always juggling different commitments—from working on research projects, writing grants to secure future funding, doing peer and grant review work, supervising research students, teaching, journal editing, administrative and leadership roles, as well as often working clinically—all while striving to maintain some semblance of work–life balance alongside caring commitments.2 Amidst this whirlwind of activity, the annual NAPCRG annual meeting can provide much-needed mental refreshment—an opportunity to put your ‘out of office’ email response on and reconnect with international colleagues. (Early career researcher) Furthermore, the variety of sessions, oral presentations, workshops, forums and preconference workshops help primary care researchers to introduce themselves and their work to the NAPCRG community. [...]it provides ways to connect and build relationships with researchers from different backgrounds, working in diverse fields of primary care research and with different levels of experience. NAPCRG specifically highlights the importance of transdisciplinary research as it engages clinician researchers, health services researchers, patients and policy makers to learn together and build on each other’s thoughts, insights, (clinical) strategies, underlying theoretical concepts and research methods. NAPCRG has been able to contribute strongly to this development by initiating the Grant Generating Project, in which family physicians, as part of their development and training, can learn to write successful research grants, and the Building Research Capacity programme, which seeks to build and sustain research and scholarship capacity in family medicine departments and residency programmes.