• - Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education 1970's (WICHIE)

  • 6 year project

  • Had workshops to teach nurses about the research process and try to get them to use research findings in practice.

  • Three reports from this project were published. One group developed a pre-operative teaching program, another devised a care plan for grieving spouses and tested it effectiveness and the third developed a program to treat and prevent constipation in nursing home residents by increasing the fiber in their diets. The main outcome of the WICHE project was the realization that only a limited number of quality clinical studies had been conducted and that most of the findings were not ready for use in practice

• CURN project 1975-1980

  • Federally funded 5 year project

  • Used research to facilitate the development of clinical protocols

  • The protocols were tested in a group of hospitals and modified as necessary

  • Many of these protocols are still in use today.

  • Used the following Research Utilization Process

    • Identification and synthesis of multiple studies on a selected topic

    • Organization of the knowledge into a solution or a clinical protocol for practice

    • Transformation of the clinical protocol into specific nursing actions that are used with patients

    • Clinical evaluation of the new practice to determine whether it produced the designed outcome (Horsley et al., 1983)

    • Research Utilization involves the following Stages

      • Knowledge Phase - find out what the research has to say about the problem of interest

      • Persuasion Stage - find out who the power players are and communicate the research findings to them. This is best done in small groups or 1 or 1 interactions.

      • Decision Stage - at this stage the proposed innovation is either accepted or rejected by the social organization. Rejection of innovation can be either active or passive. One person alone can not force a change, it has to be done through the organizational process. See the Diffusion Innovation Model below.

      • Implementation Stage - put into practice a research based protocol

      • Confirmation Stage - evaluate the effectiveness of the change, and decide to keep the change, to modify the protocol or to go back to the way things were before.

      (Mary Bennett DNSc, RN )

Questions or Comments Email: Sharonjm@midsouth.rr.com