ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book includes academics at various universities and institutions teaching and evaluating their own primary care programmes, as well as students, trainees and clinicians who might conduct primary care educational research for an honours dissertation or master's thesis. It explains the unique and specific nature of primary care educational research, and discusses its ontological, epistemological and methodological underpinnings. The book explores the scope of primary care educational research, and the current research environment in the contexts of undergraduate education, postgraduate training, continuing professional development and patient education. It provides a step-by-step guide into the processes of literature review, choosing a topic, research question and methodology, conducting the research and disseminating it. The book covers building research capacity through mentoring, developing critical mass and inter-cultural collaborations.
