Research Needs for Bipolar Disorder From Clinicians’ Perspectives: Narrowing the Research–Practice Gap

Research evidence is incompletely translated into clinical practice. This study aimed to explore research needs from clinicians’ perspectives in the field of bipolar disorder and their reflections on patients’ research needs as well as to unravel the potential role of researcher-clinicians, to narrow the research practice gap. Using focus group discussions (FGDs) and interviews, research needs according to psychiatrists, psychologists, and nurses working with bipolar disorder were explored. Subsequently, we interviewed researcher-clinicians to gain insights into their views on patients’ research needs. The clinicians’ research needs were clustered as: causes, diagnosis, pharmacotherapy, nonpharmacological treatment, recovery, and care system, and overlapped with the research needs formulated by patients. Researcher-clinicians were able to translate patients’ needs into feasible research questions. Researcher-clinicians can serve as intermediaries between research and practice and can both integrate their practical experience into research and their research experience into practice.