One approach to demystifying research in primary care.

"Research" means different things to different people. "Organized curiosity" has been proposed as a suitable description for family-practice research. Studies involving patients in community practices are becoming recognized as a unique type of research that contributes new understanding to matters relating to primary care. Such research, however, requires an infrastructure that makes a study as unobtrusive as possible in participating practices. One approach is the development of a primary care research unit (PCRU): a central co-ordinating communications office which can provide the human and technical resources needed to assist each community office with protocol and data-collection steps. The author of this article describes the functional components of a PCRU in five groupings: namely, technical, human, communication and support systems, a network of community physicians, and facilities. Finally, several important principles about funding primary care research are suggested.