22/11/2025
Idealistic and realistic
From Practice to Publication: The Unseen Researcher in Every Health Professional
In the engine room of our health system the clinics, labs, and community posts, there is a constant hum of adaptation and problem-solving. We call it "daily practice."
I call it "undocumented research."
For too long, we've accepted a false divide: the "academic" who creates knowledge and the "practitioner" who applies it. This misses the most critical point: The frontline is where theory meets reality, and reality often wins.
The best research topics don't come from textbooks. The most transformative research, the kind that truly closes the "know-do gap," isn't born in a university. It's born from the practice.
* It's the pharmacist who notices why patients misunderstand adherence instructions for a specific drug.
* It's the lab technician who identifies a systematic bottleneck in the testing workflow that no administrator can see.
* It's the midwife who understands why community trust in a specific protocol is failing.
This isn't just about empowering physicians and nurses. It’s about recognizing that the entire health workforce holds critical, specialized data. The health officer, the radiographer, the nurses.... they each see a part of the system that others cannot. Without their insights, our "evidence-based solutions" are incomplete.
Empowering these frontline experts to answer the questions they are uniquely positioned to ask:
* System Design: Why do our workflows create burnout, and how can we redesign them for both resilience and better outcomes?
* Digital Integration: Why are new EMR systems or telemedicine tools really failing to gain traction on the ground? (Hint: Ask the end-user, not just the manager).
* Patient-Centered Equity: What "small" cultural, linguistic, or economic factors are the critical determinants of a patient's health journey?
* Quality & Safety: How do our official protocols actually function after-hours, when we're understaffed, or when the supply chain breaks?
To provide the mentorship and modular tools that turn frontline observation into formal evidence.
If you’re a health professional with a question that keeps coming up in your daily work, that pattern you can't ignore—that is not a distraction… that’s your research topic. Let’s turn practice into evidence. Let’s make frontline wisdom visible.
Nesredin Ahmed
Lecturer at Haramaya University College of Health and Medical Sciences
Telegram: t.me/HakimEthio