Columbus Publishers

International Journal of Nursing and Health Care Science

Volume 02: Issue 09

Guthrie DR.

Studies have shown that prepackaged, processed information is also utilized more frequently in healthcare than single research studies [10].

Furthermore information seeking thoroughness among nurses is directly related to the amount of uncertainty inherent in the decision. Routine decisions are commonly based on the nurse’s own experience, assessment of the patient, and information from other people. A non-routine decision, on the other hand, requires information gathering from a larger variety of sources. Nurses do not, in general, perform exhaustive information searches to find the best evidence, but rather will stop their search when they have enough information to make a decision [9].

Additionally, nurses often require information through passive dissemination; that is, they are told the information in one-way communication and are not interactive participants regarding information exchange [2]. Nursing addressed this by instituting interactive advanced practice nurse led walking rounds. The evidence base information presented by the advanced practice nurse appears to be retained better than if it had been given passively [11]. Acute healthcare organizations strive to improve by having directives in place to review policies and procedures on a regular basis to facilitate current evidence uptake. In addition, preprocessed evidence is made easily accessible to nurses [9]. The interventions for the nursing staff in acute healthcare organizations may also be applicable to address the evidence uptake shortcomings at any healthcare organization.

It has been a challenge to close the gap between evidence based findings and actual evidence uptake at the acute care setting, but strides are being made. Barriers to evidence uptake, and the subsequent solutions to address the barriers, have been uncovered in the acute care setting [12]. It would be beneficial to know whether similar barriers exist in the public health setting and whether acute care setting interventions are applicable in the public health environment. This project will examine these unknowns- with the greater goal of improving the public’s health.

### Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework for this project is Rogers Diffusion of Innovations [13]. As applied to evidence-based practice, or evidence uptake, research findings (evidence) represent the innovation; the report, systematic review, meta-analysis, or other presentation of the research findings represent the communication; and the health-care setting represents the social system. For this project, the knowledge and persuasion stages are the stages of interests and the "Innovation" is defined as research utilization knowledge and persuasion of its value.

## Methods

### Research Design

A descriptive cross-sectional survey design was used to identify survey respondents’ personal and professional characteristics related to research utilization, their perceived barriers and facilitators of research use, and their perceptions of organizational culture; the effectiveness of the proposed organizational strategies on their perceptions of the organization's research culture was also examined.

### Sample/Setting

A judgment, non-probability sample of nursing administrators, as well as other administrators in the healthcare organization was surveyed. These were the individuals who would be most involved with evidence uptake when policies are updated.

### Instrument

A reliable and valid research instrument-the BARRIERS to Research Utilization Scale [14] (alpha = .91) was adapted to measure the organizations administrators attitudes and beliefs about research uptake and utilization. The BARRIERS tool, a 35 question Likert type scale that elicits perceptions of barriers and facilitators of research utilization, is divided into four subscales: characteristics of the adopter (the surveyees research values, skills, awareness); characteristics of the organization (setting barriers and limitations; e.g. time, resources, support); characteristics of the innovation (qualities of research findings and methodologies); and characteristics of communication (presentation and accessibility of the research). This tool contains 29 fixed response questions,