The Consensus Reporting Items for Studies in Primary Care (CRISP) checklist – the first research reporting guideline made by and for primary care

On behalf of the CRISP working group, we are proud to present the Consensus Reporting Items for Studies in Primary Care (CRISP) checklist (Phillips et al. 2023). The CRISP checklist is the result of a 5-year program of research that involved practitioners, researchers, patients and community members as informants of the process (Phillips et al. 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). The goal of the CRISP initiative is to support the high quality reporting of primary care research to meet the needs of the primary healthcare (PHC) community.

The CRISP initiative used a unique and forward-thinking process to develop the checklist. Usually, research reporting guidelines are developed by a select group of experts who agree on what should be included in the guide. In the CRISP process, we elected to undertake a program reflecting the fundamental values and priorities of primary care as an inclusive, holistic, patient-centred specialty. We took a broad and inclusive view of who should be considered the experts and recognised the valuable and unique perspective of all who are involved in primary care. This process culminated in a Delphi process that included nearly 100 respondents from across the world, all of whom are part of the community of primary care researchers, clinicians, patients, policymakers and community representatives (Sturgiss et al. 2022). This CRISP process pioneers a fresh and more inclusive way of thinking about expertise and experience when developing guidelines for the research community.

Derived from this perspective and program of research, the CRISP checklist is different in important ways from the many other research reporting guidelines. Even when a study design calls for a methodologic reporting guideline, CRISP augments the value of the report for the producers and users of PHC research.

CRISP asks authors of PHC research reports to include information often omitted from research reports conducted in other settings following other reporting guidelines (Sturgiss et al. 2022). Reports can be made more useful to readers and users of research by using the CRISP checklist to more clearly report the concepts, contexts and values that make their work more meaningful to people working in the variety of PHC settings.

CRISP explicitly asks researchers to describe how they included primary care patients, practicing clinicians and community members throughout the research process. In studies on health problems, CRISP asks authors to clarify if the problem is acute or chronic, if the encounter is for a new problem or a follow-up visit, if the patient is new or established in the practice and if the patient has a continuity relationship with the clinician. These factors are important in primary care but often ignored by research done in other settings. The CRISP checklist asks researchers to report if their study measures have been validated in primary care settings. It also asks authors to report study findings in terms clinically useful by PHC patients and clinicians.

The CRISP checklist is the first research reporting guide developed by and for the primary care research community. Our working group included people from five nations. We also prioritised the inclusion of learners throughout the process by working with students and early career researchers in the USA, Australia and the Netherlands. We believe that the CRISP checklist will be helpful to international primary care researchers and we are now working with local teams to translate the checklist into a variety of languages, including Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and German. These translations will support the global primary care community in communicating research effectively for application to improve patient care and healthcare systems in their communities.

The Australian Journal of Primary Health is a leader in including the CRISP checklist among the reporting guidelines it recommends to authors. This reflects the Journal’s priority of publishing reports that deliver new knowledge to help readers improve patient care and health outcomes for the diverse patients and populations we serve. The CRISP checklist supports this aim.