It is important that research has impact - through making material difference to the world of practice, or our understanding of it. The process of identifying a research question - a need to change or understanding something - is often based on the expectation of impact.

In healthcare, the utlimate aim is to provide benefit to patient outcomes or experience, and educational research can aim to achieve such benefits, even if indirectly. There are in fact a number of ways in which ClinEdR can achieve impact.

• Directly benefiting patients (for example, by developing educational interventions that directly improve quality of care)
• Benefiting individual clinicians (for example, by enhancing their knowledge or skills, career development or  wellbeing
• Benefiting  health systems  (for example, by improving recruitment and retention, resulting in a more stable, inclusive and diverse workforce)
• Developing  educational systems and processes (for example, by improving curricula and assessment to better prepare practitioners for clinical work).
• Studying, challenging and developing the standards, values and practices to which the healthcare professions aspire  (for example, by engaging with patients to improve the ways in which clinicians and  patients interact)

ClinEdR can achieve impact in any, or even all, of these ways. For example, an educational programme designed to improve students' communication skills may benefit those students, but subsequently improve patient experience, patient outcomes, and so enhance practitioners well-being, and contribute to a  more resilient health system.

There is no single way to identify the impact of a ClinEdR project, and some will be more indirect than others. It is important though that a project considers the form impact may take, and how it may be demonstrated.