Best Practice Guidelines at the Point-of-Care: Refining the Tools and Technology

Friday, 16 July 2010: 9:10 AM

Irmajean Bajnok, RN, MSN, PhD
International Affairs and Best Practice Guidelines Programs, Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada
Frederick Go, RN, MScN
International Affairs and Best Practice Guidelines Program, Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada
Karen Ellis-Scharfenberg
Centre for Professional Nursing Excellence, Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, Toronto, ON, Canada

Learning Objective 1: 1. Describe strategies for providing best evidence to nurses at the point of care through technology.

Learning Objective 2: 2. Outline and discuss specific strategies to facilitate effectiveness and efficiency in using guidelines through technology at the point of care.

A major professional nursing association leads a world renowned Clinical and Healthy Work Environment Best Practice Guidelines Program that incorporates rigorous guideline development, dissemination, implementation and evaluation processes.  Over the past 2 years, the organization has been involved in using technology to provide condensed versions of the best practice guidelines to nurses at the point of care.  These quick reference guides provide a summary of the evidence, the practice recommendations and implementation tools.   They  are available on the website and can be loaded onto PDAs or tablets for ready use by nurses at point of care.  
Following one year of use, feedback was obtained from nurses across all sectors  through focus groups  to determine how the quick reference guides were being  used.  Results informed a series of refinements to the condensed versions of the guidelines and also changed the way these tools are being introduced to nurses to enhance their effectiveness and impact when used  by nurses at the point of care. 
This presentation will share and discuss  the results of the focus groups indicating the usefulness of such resources for nurses in clinical decision making at the point of care.  In addition, specific changes in how the condensed guidelines are presented, special search features incorporated and the impact of this work on the overall guideline development and implementation process will be discussed.