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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.
