Late November 2024 saw primary care researchers from across the world, including a contingent from General Practice & Primary Care (GPPC), University of Glasgow, travelling to Québec City for the 52nd annual meeting of the North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG), the largest primary care research meeting of its kind.

With a jam-packed programme over five days, over 1200 attendees and including over 600 research sessions, the scope and sheer volume of research work being shared was something to behold.

The immensely inspiring Dr Iona Heath delivered a bold and heartfelt keynote speech on the opening day of the conference, entitled ‘Rediscovering Joy in Primary Care’. Drawing on the theme of ‘bread and roses’, Heath warned of the dangers that come with an overstated focus on quantifiable and transactional aspects of medicine and care, and instead highlighted the importance of human connection, curiosity, kindness and joy in primary care.

The annual meeting provides opportunities for networking and collaboration between members of special interest groups, including the Multimorbidity Special Interest Group, chaired by Dr Barbara Nicholl, which brought together primary care researchers particularly interested in multimorbidity from across the world, with members from Canada, USA, Nigeria, Japan, Singapore, China and the UK. This was an incredible opportunity to meet those interested in this area, and to share the common features and challenges in multimorbidity research across such varied contexts and settings.

As an early career researcher, there were some very instructive sessions tailored to the needs and priorities of those earlier along the research journey, in particular a useful forum delivered in collaboration by the editorial team of the journal Annals of Family Medicine and the NAPCRG Trainee Committee on transforming trainee projects into publications. This included great advice on identifying gaps in knowledge, creating compelling work which passes the ‘so what’ test, common pitfalls and reasons for paper rejections, and preparing manuscripts for successful submission.

GPPC's Dr Barbara Nicholl, Dr Nic Dickson and Prof Sara Macdonald led a fantastic and fun workshop on using participatory and arts-based methods in primary care research where participants had the chance to practice some lively photovoice and body-mapping methods, whilst learning about the value of these methods in research practice.

There were also brilliant presentations by Prof Andrea Williamson on addressing missingness in healthcare and Dr David Blane on the ReDIRECT study, both further contributing to the strong representation of research from GPPC and the University of Glasgow at this international forum.

I was delighted and grateful for the opportunity to present work in progress from my PhD project entitled ‘Quantifying cost and quality of life outcomes in different multimorbidity trajectories: a systematic review' in one of the conference’s poster sessions which was another unique experience in terms of both scale and the range of people participating, and subjects presented in the session. It was great to be able to engage with people one-to-one to discuss my project work and future plans, to meet researchers with similar interests, receive valuable feedback on the poster and to explore possibilities for future collaboration.

Outside of the core programmed sessions there were also many opportunities to meet and speak with the other conference attendees, each of whom seemed so enthusiastic and delighted to be there, and all contributing to a very energising, positive atmosphere and overall experience at NAPCRG 2024.

 

First published: 13 January 2025

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