The importance of instant impact: What matters to long‐term care staff and residents about taking part in research?

There is an urgent need for research that can inform policy and practice in long-term care.1 However, issues such as high levels of staff turnover,2 misconceptions and negative attitudes about research,3, 4 and chronic staff shortages5 are obstacles to engaging long-term care staff and residents with research. The COVID-19 pandemic also exposed gaps in the research infrastructure within long-term care,1 highlighting the need for innovative approaches that could foster a collaborative research culture within the long-term care sector.Understanding what long-term care staff and residents think and feel about research is an important first step toward collaborative research engagement. We therefore drew on field notes that we took during our conversations between researchers, and 11 members of staff and seven residents from two long-term care homes in Toronto (Canada) and one in Manchester (UK), in May and July 2023, about their views and experiences of taking part in research. The staff roles represented included management/directorship, care assistance, nursing, programming/activity coordination, research leadership, and administration. In this article, we share some of the key insights gained from these conversations about how researchers could more effectively engage staff and residents in research