LEARN HOW TO TRANSLATE THE EVIDENCE (APPLY)
So you have gathered and evaluated all this information, now what do you do with it?
According to the Evidence-based Practice Model, your next step should be to conduct a pilot project. What is a Pilot Project?
A pilot project involves the implementation of the intervention on a small-scale to test its effectiveness and identify barriers. Usually, a pilot project would take place your unit with the approval of your patient care manager and nursing director. If a pilot project proves to be successful on your unit, the hospital may decide to implement the new evidence-based practice as a hospital-wide policy. Forming Project Teams
An important part of the implementation process is having an engaged project team. Most nursing units at Ellis have a unit-based forum (UBF), a shared decision-making body. The UBF consists of staff nurses and educators from your unit, and they can help implement evidence-based nursing projects in your clinical area. You can utilize your UBF as part your project team. They can help you plan how to carry out a project on your unit and what resources may be needed. You may also want to include team members from other disciplines if they are major stakeholders in the project, for example, Pharmacy. Plan~do~study~Act: The PDSA Cycle
The Questions
There are three questions that will help guide your evidence-based improvement project:
For more information on measuring project success, go to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement website. Plan
The planning stage of the PDSA cycle involves developing the change or test you will be implementing. This can be done with the input of your project team. You will want to consider the following questions:
Do
Once you have a clear plan of how to carry out your project plan, you can begin implementing. Be sure to communicate expectations and deadlines to each person who is involved in the implementation. Effective team communication is important to ensuring project success. Also, you should be collecting data related to your project metrics. Study
Once the change is implemented and you've collected data, you will need to study or analyze it using the measures of success you developed in the "Plan" phase as a comparison. Did the results show what you expected? What did you learn while doing the project? What were the barriers you faced in implementation? What worked for your team? What didn't work? Act
After analyzing the results, you can Act on them. The action phase may involve one of three outcomes:
PDSA Resources
Reference: Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2017). "How to Improve." Available from: http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/HowtoImprove/default.aspx Project ManagementFor more complex projects, or to implement a hospital-wide change that is based on the results of your pilot project, you may need to utilize project management tools. Below are some simplified resources, developed with the advice of a project manager, that you can use for your project. Planning Your Project
Below is a handy project charter worksheet that you can download to help you with the project planning process. It will help you organize your plan to help make the project implementation easier. You and your mentor can work on this together. Project Charter Elements
By utilizing a project plan template, like the one above, you are ensuring that have a concrete plan for how to proceed in implementing your evidence-based improvement project. This will help you keep track of what should be happening during the implementation, and allow you and the other team members to have some level of accountability to your timeline. Communications Plan
You will need to develop a communications plan for your project. The communications plan will detail your approach to informing stakeholders about the project and its progress. You will want to divide your plan into sections for each group of stakeholders, and include the following elements for each group:
Developing a Budget
If your project plan includes the purchase of supplies or equipment, and/or requires staff time outside of their normal duties, you will need to develop a simple budget to submit along with your project charter and communications plan.
Below is a template that you can use to help develop your budget. Getting Approval
Before you kicking off your project, you'll need to get approval your nursing director, and possibly even the vice president of nursing. Your mentor and patient care manager can help facilitate bringing your project charter and communications plan to the attention of leadership to get the needed approvals. Kick-off Meeting
After you've gotten approval from leadership for your project, you'll want to host a project kick-off meeting. At this meeting, you will provide a high-level overview of the project, including:
For more information about developing a PowerPoint presentation for this meeting, consult the presentation resources in the Disseminate section. Running the Project
Role of the project Lead or ManagerIf you become the project lead, you will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the project. This may involve:
For more information on Project Management, consult the following resources: You'll also want to hold regular meetings with your project team to monitor project progress. Here are some resources on keys to having successful meetings: Project Wrap Up
After you have finished implementing the pilot project, and collecting your data, you will want to share the results of your evidence-based project.
There are two main ways that you will share your results:
internal report-outStakeholder Meetings Pointers:
Leadership Meetings:
External DisseminationPlease proceed to the Disseminate section to learn more about sharing your EBP project results with other professionals. |