What is VID?
Line: VID is a national network that is driven by the four research units for general practice in Denmark. The purpose is to collect, transfer and implement new knowledge in general practice.
Linda: Our ambition with VID is to serve as a joint resource in a strong implementation environment across the medical specialty of general practice, the four research units and the regional quality assurance units. The VID network collaborates closely with the quality assurance units, and key players in general practice are represented in the steering group, including the four research units for general practice, the Danish College of General Practitioners (DSAM) and the Organization of General Practitioners in Denmark (PLO).
What is your focus?
Linda: Our mission is to build a bridge between knowledge and clinical practice for the benefit of the patients. We will do so through various initiatives that combine knowledge gathering, networking and knowledge transfer.
Line: Our initiatives will be aimed at several key players in the environment around general practice, including general practitioners, researchers and employees in the quality assurance units. Focal points will be detection and follow-up of serious illness and reducing inequality in health.
Why is it important?
Line: Research shows that general practice has challenging conditions for introducing new ways of working inspired by new evidence-based knowledge. Many researchers want to do research that is useful and applicable in the clinics. But dissemination of findings is rarely prioritised once the research project has been completed, and this makes it difficult to transfer new knowledge to all relevant target groups.
Linda: General practitioners have many different tasks, and there is rarely time to find and read the latest research - or to process this knowledge. We know that lack of time to create change is a barrier to implementing new routines in clinical practice. We believe that VID can make a difference here.
What do you expect to achieve?
Linda: We hope to add some structures to support collaboration between care professionals with an interest in general practice. For example, we hope that - by making new knowledge available across traditional boundaries - we will be able to create a better framework for dissemination and implementation of new knowledge that will ultimately benefit the patients.
Line: In addition, we hope that the VID network can help spread knowledge about how change is best supported in general practice, and which measures are most optimal under different circumstances when you want to implement new workflows in general practice.
What is your most important message?
Line: Together with existing players in the field, the VID network will support and supplement the ongoing work of ensuring high quality in general practice. All patients should have the same good treatment options in the healthcare system, regardless of the geographical location of their home.
Linda: The dissemination of the most recent scientific evidence should be strengthened, and we would like to help transfer the latest knowledge into clinical practice. A shared objective in all our initiatives is that what we do should increase the quality and benefit the patients in general practice.
Linda Aagaard Rasmussen is a trained nurse and has an MSc in Health Science and a PhD from Aarhus University. She is currently a postdoc at the Research Unit for General Practice in Aarhus, working part-time as a researcher and part-time as a consultant in the Danish Network for Knowledge and Competencies in General Practice (VID).
The VID network aims to spread knowledge on how change is best facilitated in general practice.
Line Flytkjær Virgilsen has an MSc in Public Health and a PhD from Aarhus University. She is currently a postdoc at the Research Unit for General Practice in Aarhus, working part-time as a researcher and part-time as a consultant in the Danish Network for Knowledge and Competencies in General Practice (VID).
We hope to create a framework to support collaboration between different care professionals with an interest in general practice.