Problems Created by Research in Allied Teaching Facilities

¹ Dental Service, and Chairman, V.A. Research Study Group on Oral Diseases, Veterans Administration Research Hospital, Chicago, Illinois

1) The Dental Service is one of the complementary departments of hospitals. Research activities are encouraged and should be expanded, especially in studies on cancer detection, congenital malformation, and drug effects. More importantly, effective oral diagnosis, prevention, and treatment are dependent on the services and findings of biological scientists.

2) In the hospital, the main functions are patient care, continuing professional education, and research; all are interrelated.

3) Accessibility of patients and close medicodental relationships make the dental departments of hospitals ideal places to accomplish clinical and basic science studies.

4) The main source of conflict centers around the amount of time devoted to patient care and to research.

5) Hospital administrators must become informed about what research is, what is involved, how it is accomplished, and the means of facilitating time allocations to investigators.

6) There is a scarcity of qualified research personnel, and it takes time, effort, and special interest to produce them. In dentistry and in hospitals, the situations are more acute, so diverse ways and means must be found to encourage research interest.

7) Research, teaching, and superior patient care in hospitals are not mutually exclusive. To the contrary, they are complementary and inseparable functions.

8) Competition for research space is another hospital problem that can be solved in an atmosphere of cooperation and coordination, and adjudicated by research-oriented administrators.

9) Financial support for medical and health-related research has increased in recent years. Although there are still justified complaints of inadequate research support funds, established investigators in hospitals with sound programs can always obtain some source of minimum support for their projects.

10) There is much difference of opinion on the matter of individual and institutional funding of research projects. Generally speaking, hospital investigators prefer the greater flexibility of individual grants, and institutions prefer that grants be made to them, final control resting with them.

11) There is need to correct the erroneous assumption that only clinical work relieves patients, and research must be tolerated merely to fulfill the obligations of institutional accreditation.

12) In hospitals, there are many opportunities for research on the occurrence of disease. There are problems associated with epidemiologic research, but these can be overcome if there is total cooperation among all parties concerned.