What is action research and can it promote change in primary care?

Improving the quality of health care is an international priority. However, research has shown that methods of altering clinician's behaviour or imple menting organizational change are often ineffective. Action research has be en used successfully to facilitate change and improve service provision in industry, education and more recently in health care. In this paper, action research methodology and why it should be successful in promoting change a re outlined. Recently published studies using action research in the primar y health care team setting in the UK are discussed. They demonstrate that a ction research improves clinical care, teamwork, communication and administ ration. It also encourages practice teams to audit their work and identify their educational needs. The main problems encountered were the amount of t ime and effort required to maintain collaboration with participants, staff turnover and completing the research process in a short time scale. Action research should be a useful means of improving quality in health care and c ould be used more widely. In the UK, government strategy has called for ind ividual- and team-based development plans based on individual learning need s. Action research could be a useful method of transforming these from theo ry to practice.