Learning from Experience: UK Perspectives on Translation Research

Paper

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

This presentation is part of : Implementation of Research Evidence Into Practice: International Perspectives and Initiatives

Joanne Rycroft-Malone, RN, PhD, Knowledge Utilisation & Transfer, Knowledge Utilisation & Transfer, Royal College of Nursing Institute, Oxford, United Kingdom

Objective: Evidence-based practice has emerged as the dominant theme of practice, policy, management and education within the United Kingdom’s (UK) National Health Service (NHS). Policy frameworks typically indicate that the implementation of evidence into practice follows a logical and rational model from production, to dissemination and then implementation, audit and improvement. However, examples and experience from practice suggest that getting evidence into practice is a messy and complex process which cannot be explained by simplistic processes. This paper will outline some examples from UK based translation research and consider the implications they have for the advancement of translation science.

Approach: Findings from UK projects such as the Promoting Action on Clinical Effectiveness (PACE) programme (Dopson et al 1999) and the South Thames Evidence-based Practice Project (STEP) (Redfurn et al 2000), have been reviewed. From this analysis a number of main themes emerge as influential in the uptake of evidence into practice.

Findings: Key findings include ‘evidence’ is socially and historically constructed, change does not follow a prescribed or logical path, context can be a potent mediator and individuals and groups have significant roles to play in both facilitating and inhibiting implementation efforts.

Conclusions: Based on these findings a number of suggestions can be made for translation science, including the need to particularise and situate evidence, that improving practice is likely to mean drawing on different forms of information and knowledge to ascertain evidence of what works, approaches and interventions that work with, and develop the context, may be more successful than those that ignore it, and, there is a need to pay more attention to the social and human aspects of getting evidence into practice.

Implications: The implications these conclusions have for research and practice will be considered as part of this presentation.

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Sigma Theta Tau International
July 21, 2004