Synthesis of Evidence.

The most challenging aspect of an evidence-based improvement project.

Effectiveness of the Teach-Back Method for Improving Caregivers' Confidence in Caring for Hospice Patients and Decreasing Hospitalizations.

Health care professionals use teach-back to foster adherence to treatment recommendations and to improve safety and quality of care. This improvement project, conducted in one division of a home care agency, used a pretest-posttest design with an interprofessional group of hospice home care clinicians to incorporate teach-back into home visits to evaluate if the use of teach-back enhanced caregiver and patient-provider communication, improved caregivers' confidence in caring for hospice home care patients, and decreased hospitalizations. After the intervention, the teach-back group had zero hospitalizations compared with 2 for the non-teach-back group (0% and 1.

Maintaining Perioperative Normothermia: Sustaining an Evidence-Based Practice Improvement Project.

Unintentional perioperative hypothermia has been shown to cause serious patient complications and, thus, to increase health care costs. In 2009, an evidence-based practice improvement project produced a significant decrease in unintentional perioperative hypothermia in colorectal surgical patients through monitoring of OR ambient room temperature. Project leaders engaged all interdisciplinary stakeholders in the original project, which facilitated the sustainability of the intervention method.

Tactics for teaching evidence-based practice: improving self-efficacy in finding and appraising evidence in a master's evidence-based practice unit.

This column shares the best evidence-based strategies and innovative ideas on how to facilitate the learning of EBP principles and processes by clinicians as well as nursing and interprofessional students. Guidelines for submission are available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.

Telehealth in adult patients with congestive heart failure in long term home health care: a systematic review.

Background: Congestive heart failure results in clinical signs of edema, shortness of breath, and decreased quality of life. The effective management of patients with congestive heart failure in long term home care settings is important in reducing rehospitalization, emergency department visits and improving quality of life. Telehealth interventions following hospital discharge in various settings have been reported in the published literature as having an impact on decreasing emergency department visits, rehospitalization and quality of life.

Fostering evidence-based practice to improve nurse and cost outcomes in a community health setting: a pilot test of the advancing research and clinical practice through close collaboration model.

Although evidence-based practice (EBP) improves health care quality, decreases costs, and empowers nurses, there is a paucity of intervention studies designed to test models of how to enhance nurses' use of EBP. Therefore, the specific aim of this study was to determine the preliminary effects of implementing the Advancing Research and Clinical practice through close Collaboration (ARCC) model on nurses' EBP beliefs, EBP implementation behaviors, group cohesion, productivity, job satisfaction, and attrition/turnover rates. A 2-group randomized controlled pilot trial was used with 46 nurses from the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

Documenting an EBP project: guidelines for what to include and why.

In increasing numbers, nurses as members of intradisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams are implementing evidence-based practice (EBP) changes. These variations result in demonstrated improvement in outcomes for the patient and family, staff, organization, and community. Many of these EBP activities remain an untapped resource; however, they have potential for improving practice beyond a single facility or local area.

Evidence-based practice improvement: merging 2 paradigms.

This article presents a new model, Evidence-Based Practice Improvement, for improving patient care. The model merges 2 extant paradigms currently used for quality improvement initiatives-evidence-based practice and practice or performance improvement. The literature expounds on the virtues of each of these approaches, yet no authors have moved beyond parallel play between them.