Paper
Saturday, November 3, 2007

86
This presentation is part of : EBP Beliefs, Implementation and Organizational Readiness: Psychometric Properties of Three New Scales
Validity and Reliability of the Organizational Readiness for System-Wide Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice (ORSIEP) Scale
Ellen Fineout-Overholt, PhD, RN, College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA
Purpose: There is a great need for organizations to move toward an evidence-based practice (EBP) culture.  Studies have indicated that organizations and healthcare professionals need to be ready to move toward the EBP paradigm to improve patient and system outcomes.  There is a lack of scales to measure organizational readiness for implementation of EBP in a manner that will assist the organization to target the areas where infrastructure to support an EBP culture need strengthening. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of a new scale, the Organizational Readiness for System-Wide Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice, which were developed from the literature on Learning Organizations and EBP culture requirements, along with expert opinion validated in qualitative evidence.

Methods: The scales were administered to multiple healthcare providers in acute care agencies across several states. The scale is a 19-item instrument on which healthcare professionals are asked to respond to each item (e.g.,”To what extent is EBP clearly described as central to the mission and philosophy of your institution?,” “To what extent are fiscal resources used to support EBP?”) on a 5-point Likert scale that ranges from 1 (None at All) to 5 (very much). The final question asks the responder to identify on a visual analog scale within the past six months how much the organization has moved toward an EBP culture.

 Findings: Content and face validity for both scales was confirmed by 6 experts in EBP. Reliability coefficients for the scale exceeded 0.85.

Conclusions and Practice Implications: The ORSIEP is a valid and reliable instrument that can assist healthcare executives, administrators, managers, educators and staff to understand how ready they are to engage system-wide EBP. Identifying what is in place and what is needed for sustainability is the first step in moving toward an EBP culture.

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