Characteristics of community-based primary care physicians participating in research

Participation of community-based primary care practitioners in practice-based research has been encouraged for several years. The purpose of this study was to examine characteristics related to community-based primary care physician participation in research activities.

This study is a secondary analysis of the survey "Practice Patterns of Young Physicians, 1987: United States," which was originally conducted by the American Medical Association. The respondents were full-time primary care physicians (family or general practice, pediatrics, general internal medicine) who were not employed by a medical school or a university (N = 1713).

Seven percent of practitioners not affiliated with a medical school reported spending at least some time during the previous week conducting medical research. Among community-based physicians with faculty appointments, only 20% spend any time engaged in research activities during the same time frame. Among community-based practitioners affiliated with a medical school, researchers saw significantly fewer patients per week than did nonresearchers. However, there was no difference between researchers and nonresearchers in terms of specialty, total weekly work hours, or annual income.

Based on the data used in this analysis, only a small proportion of community-based primary care physicians participate in research. Physicians affiliated with medical schools conducted research at nearly three times the rate of unaffiliated physicians. However, participation in research activities had little impact on community physicians' workload or income.