Makhija Sonia K, Gilbert Gregg H, Rindal D Brad, Benjamin Paul, Richman Joshua S, Pihlstrom Daniel J, Qvist Vibeke
Department of General Dental Sciences, School of Dentistry, University of Alabama, Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
BMC Oral Health. 2009 Oct 15;9:26. doi: 10.1186/1472-6831-9-26.
Practice-based research networks offer important opportunities to move recent advances into routine clinical practice. If their findings are not only generalizable to dental practices at large, but can also elucidate how practice characteristics are related to treatment outcome, their importance is even further elevated. Our objective was to determine whether we met a key objective for The Dental Practice-Based Research Network (DPBRN): to recruit a diverse range of practitioner-investigators interested in doing DPBRN studies.
DPBRN participants completed an enrollment questionnaire about their practices and themselves. To date, more than 1100 practitioners from the five participating regions have completed the questionnaire. The regions consist of: Alabama/Mississippi, Florida/Georgia, Minnesota, Permanente Dental Associates, and Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden). We tested the hypothesis that there are statistically significant differences in key characteristics among DPBRN practices, based on responses from dentists who participated in DPBRN's first network-wide study (n = 546).
There were statistically significant, substantive regional differences among DPBRN-participating dentists, their practices, and their patient populations.
Although as a group, participants have much in common with practices at large; their substantial diversity offers important advantages, such as being able to evaluate how practice differences may affect treatment outcomes, while simultaneously offering generalizability to dentists at large. This should help foster knowledge transfer in both the research-to-practice and practice-to-research directions.
基于实践的研究网络为将近期进展应用于常规临床实践提供了重要机遇。如果其研究结果不仅能推广至广大牙科诊所，还能阐明诊所特征与治疗结果之间的关系，那么其重要性将进一步提升。我们的目标是确定我们是否实现了牙科基于实践的研究网络（DPBRN）的一个关键目标：招募对开展DPBRN研究感兴趣的各类从业者-研究者。
DPBRN参与者完成了一份关于其诊所及自身情况的入组调查问卷。迄今为止，来自五个参与地区的1100多名从业者已完成该问卷。这些地区包括：阿拉巴马州/密西西比州、佛罗里达州/佐治亚州、明尼苏达州、永久牙科协会以及斯堪的纳维亚地区（丹麦、挪威和瑞典）。我们基于参与DPBRN首次全网络研究的牙医的回答（n = 546），检验了DPBRN各诊所关键特征存在统计学显著差异这一假设。
参与DPBRN的牙医、他们的诊所及其患者群体在统计学上存在显著的实质性地区差异。
尽管作为一个群体，参与者与广大诊所存在诸多共同之处；但他们的显著多样性具有重要优势，比如能够评估诊所差异如何影响治疗结果，同时对广大牙医具有推广性。这应有助于促进研究到实践以及实践到研究两个方向的知识转移。
