Igniting the Fire of Discovery: Creating Partnerships Between Research, Education, and Practice

In the 28th H.P. Maley Lecture, Stacey Dusing, PT, PhD, FAPTA, shares a perspective on the importance of clinician-scientists in bridging the chasm that currently exists between scholarship and clinical practice. Describing herself as a clinician-scientist, or a qualified health care professional who functions mainly as a career scientist with the other portion of time dedicated to clinical practice, Dusing highlights the potential impact of limited training for clinician-scientists in the physical therapist profession and its impact on the future of physical therapy. She challenges all physical therapists to consider the impact of Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education requirements on scholarship and the lack of requirement for clinical practice while also recognizing that training programs for clinician-scientists are quite limited. Reviewing some historical data and highlighting possible areas for growth, Dusing calls physical therapists to action in 4 areas. This paper calls all physical therapists, especially educators and administrators, to consider the role of clinician-scientist in promoting physical therapy and knowledge translation. The author challenges the profession to consider whether we are helping to train or embed clinician-scientists in our clinical workplaces to promote knowledge translation. Suggestions are made to improve research and clinical training programs to increase the number of clinician-scientists in physical therapy.