NURS 500 Week 8 Discussion Board Forum 2, Moving Research Findings Into Practice Example

Discussion Board Forum 2: From Published Findings to Changed Practice

NURS 500 Research, Discussion Board Forum 2

Thread by [Student Name]

The colleagues and the unit example are composites written for a model post.

Nearly every nursing student has heard that it takes 17 years for research findings to reach routine practice. Working on the research proposal and article critique in this course made me curious about where that number comes from. Morris et al. (2011) reviewed 23 studies that tried to measure time lags in health research and found that they measured different things, such as the time from a grant to a publication or from a trial to a guideline, at different points and with different definitions. Their conclusion was not that the lag is exactly 17 years, but that it is long, poorly understood and impossible to manage until it is measured more consistently. The famous number is really a warning that nobody is timing the race, which is a problem nurses are well placed to solve on their own units.

For an MSN-prepared nurse, the practical question is not how long translation takes in general but how to shorten it for a specific finding. The Iowa Model, as revised and validated by its developers, lays out a sequence that fits hospital work (Iowa Model Collaborative, 2017). Its first move is to name what prompted the question, a clinical problem or a new piece of knowledge, and then to check that leaders consider the issue important enough to fund the work. A team then gathers and critiques the evidence, decides whether it is sufficient, and if so designs and pilots the change before integrating and sustaining it. The revision drew on a survey of 431 people who had requested the original model and was then judged practical by 299 conference participants, and its main changes expanded the guidance on piloting, implementing and sustaining a change, because many changes fade once the champion leaves.

Applied to the proposal I wrote this term, the trigger would be the number of caregivers returning to the emergency department with tube problems. If the study found that teach-back reduced those visits, the next step would not be a journal article alone but a pilot on one unit, with discharge nurses trained, a fidelity checklist in the record and monthly data on return visits shared with staff. Only after the pilot showed the change could be done reliably would it spread to the other two units and enter the hospital's discharge policy.

James wrote, "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, James 1:22). The verse speaks first to faith, but the principle applies to professional knowledge as well. A nurse who reads a strong study and changes nothing has heard but not acted, and the patients who could have benefited carry the cost. Closing the gap between knowing and doing is part of serving others faithfully.

Reply to Tasha

Tasha, your plan to present your proposal as a poster at the hospital's nursing research day is a practical first step, and I agree that local presentations reach the nurses who will actually change practice. I would add that a poster works best when it asks for a decision, not only attention. In the Iowa Model, a key step after reviewing the evidence is deciding whether it is strong enough to pilot (Iowa Model Collaborative, 2017). If your poster ended with a specific request, for example asking the unit council to approve a three-month pilot of bedside shift report on one wing, the presentation would become the start of the change rather than the end of the project. You might also bring a one-page summary for managers who stop by but cannot read the whole poster. Proverbs 15:22 reminds us that "without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). Inviting the unit council's counsel early is how a poster becomes a policy. Which council would need to approve your pilot first? Knowing that before research day would let you shape the poster's closing panel to that group's concerns.

Reply to Kevin

Kevin, you made an honest point that experienced nurses sometimes resist new evidence because they have seen many initiatives come and go. I think that resistance is often reasonable, and the research supports taking it seriously. Morris et al. (2011) found that the studies of translation lags were so inconsistent that it was hard even to say where the delays occur, which means some of the "slowness" is really uncertainty about whether a finding is ready. Nurses who have watched three falls protocols replace one another in five years are right to ask for evidence that the fourth one is different. The answer is to bring those nurses into the evidence review rather than presenting them with a finished decision. When they help judge the studies, they become owners of the change. Paul's advice to "test everything; hold fast what is good" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Thessalonians 5:21) describes that stance well: skepticism that leads to careful testing, not refusal. Would your unit's most experienced nurses be willing to join a journal club if the first article chosen addressed a problem they already care about? Starting with their question rather than ours might be the fastest way to earn their trust.

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Iowa Model Collaborative. (2017). Iowa model of evidence-based practice: Revisions and validation. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 14(3), 175-182. https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12223

Morris, Z. S., Wooding, S., & Grant, J. (2011). The answer is 17 years, what is the question: Understanding time lags in translational research. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 104(12), 510-520. https://doi.org/10.1258/jrsm.2011.110180