Frequently, research fails to change or inform practice because it does not address the pressing issues experienced by the community, does not reach its intended audience, is not transferable to other settings, or is not scalable. Bridging this research-practice gap is essential to seeing a change in suicide outcomes.
Building a clinician-researcher workforce and drawing from the wisdom of people who understand the pressures and nuances of delivering suicide prevention interventions in practice is one key way that the research-practice translation bridge can be strengthened.
This symposium and panel will provide a snapshot of key learnings and recommendations from a group of suicide prevention clinician-researchers who came together, during 2023, through the Lifeways (National Suicide Prevention Leadership) group mentoring program. Through a series of six sessions, this group explored the challenges and opportunities for people pursuing a dual-career clinician/researcher pathway. The group also identified a range of ways research-practice translation can be improved in suicide prevention.
Using the evidence base, alongside examples from the group’s own experiences, the presentations will cover:
The presentations will be followed by a panel discussion, including questions from the floor, about key challenges and the way forward.
By synthesising the learnings shared through the group mentoring program with the broader evidence-practice translation knowledge base, this symposium will provide a preliminary roadmap about how the suicide prevention sector can approach and strengthen the connection between evidence and practice within routine care settings- in order to accelerate impact of collective suicide prevention efforts.