The relationship between busyness and research utilization: it is about time.

Aims And Objectives: To explore the concept of busyness in nursing and to understand the relationship between busyness and nurses' research utilization better.

Background: Lack of time and busyness are consistently reported as barriers to research utilization. Current literature fails to identify the dimensions of busyness and offers little insight into the relationship between busyness and nurses' research utilization.

Methodological issues in interviews involving people with communication impairments after acquired brain damage.

Qualitative research has made a significant contribution to the body of knowledge related to how people experience living with various chronic diseases and disabilities; however, the voices of certain vulnerable populations, particularly those with impairments that affect their ability to communicate, are commonly absent. In recent years, a few researchers have attempted to explore the most effective ways to ensure that the voices of people with communication impairments from acquired brain damages can be captured in qualitative research interviews; yet several methodological issues related to including this population in qualitative research remained unexamined. In this article, the authors draw on insights derived from their research on the experiences of adult survivors of stroke and traumatic brain injury to describe methodological issues related to sampling, informed consent, and fatigue in participant and researcher while also making some recommendations for conducting qualitative interviews with these populations.

Knowledge translation consensus conference: research methods.

The authors facilitated a workshop session during the 2007 Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference to address the specific research methodologies most suitable for studies investigating the effectiveness of knowledge translation interventions. Breakout session discussions, recommendations, and examples in emergency medicine findings are presented.

Bridging the gap between clinical research and knowledge translation in pediatric emergency medicine.

In 2006, a multidisciplinary group of researchers from across Canada submitted a successful application to the Canadian Institutes for Health Research for a Canadian Institutes for Health Research Team in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. The conceptual foundation for the proposal was to bring together two areas deemed critical for optimizing health outcomes: clinical research and knowledge translation (KT). The framework for the proposed work is an iterative figure-eight model that provides logical steps for research and a seamless flow between the development and evaluation of therapeutic interventions (clinical research) and the implementation and uptake of those interventions that prove to be effective (KT).

Taking stock of current societal, political and academic stakeholders in the Canadian healthcare knowledge translation agenda.

Background: In the past 15 years, knowledge translation in healthcare has emerged as a multifaceted and complex agenda. Theoretical and polemical discussions, the development of a science to study and measure the effects of translating research evidence into healthcare, and the role of key stakeholders including academe, healthcare decision-makers, the public, and government funding bodies have brought scholarly, organizational, social, and political dimensions to the agenda.

Objective: This paper discusses the current knowledge translation agenda in Canadian healthcare and how elements in this agenda shape the discovery and translation of health knowledge.

Interventions aimed at increasing research use in nursing: a systematic review.

Background: There has been considerable interest recently in developing and evaluating interventions to increase research use by clinicians. However, most work has focused on medical practices; and nursing is not well represented in existing systematic reviews. The purpose of this article is to report findings from a systematic review of interventions aimed at increasing research use in nursing.

Understanding work contextual factors: a short-cut to evidence-based practice?

Background: It has become increasingly clear that workplace contextual factors make an important contribution to provider and patient outcomes. The potential for health care professionals of using research in practice is also linked to such factors, although the exact factors or mechanisms for enhancing this potential are not understood. From a perspective of implementing evidence-based nursing practice, the authors of this article report on a study examining contextual factors.

Evidence, research, knowledge: a call for conceptual clarity.

Objective: To dispel some of the conceptual confusion in the field of evidence-based practice that has resulted from the overlapping use of the terms research, evidence, and knowledge.

Approach: Theoretical discussion.

Findings: Often the terms research and knowledge are used as synonyms for evidence, but the overlap is never complete.

Mapping the organizational culture research in nursing: a literature review.

Aim: This paper reports a critical review of nursing organizational culture research studies with the objectives of: (1) reviewing theoretical and methodological characteristics of the studies and (2) drawing inferences specific to the state of knowledge in this field.

Background: Organizational culture is regarded as significant in influencing research use in clinical practice yet it is not understood how culture shapes practitioners' behaviours. Only one review of this empirical literature in nursing has been completed.

Understanding how organizational culture shapes research use.

In the climate of evidence-based practice, practitioners are expected to use research in their day-to-day clinical work; however, it is generally accepted that much healthcare is not based on research. The authors suggest 3 specific ways that organizational culture affects practitioner research use and propose leadership strategies that managers may find facilitate evidence-based practice. Through understanding how organizational culture can both hinder and facilitate practitioners' research use behaviors, managers are well positioned to leverage culture to improve evidence-based practice sustainability in their organizations.

Mapping the journey of cancer patients through the health care system. Part 3: An approach to staging.

This is the third in a series of articles relating results from a line of research whose intent was to construct a complete history of patient interactions with the health care system using available data sources for all patients diagnosed in 1990 with a primary breast, colorectal, or lung tumour in Manitoba. This article presents details of the development and application of methods to produce TNM staging data on the roughly 2,000 patients in this population. The operational definitions constructed for this research can be adapted for other tumour sites and data sources.

Sources of practice knowledge among nurses.

Several studies have been published listing sources of practice knowledge used by nurses. However, the authors located no studies that asked clinicians to describe comprehensively and categorize the kinds of knowledge needed to practice or in which the researchers attempted to understand how clinicians privilege various knowledge sources. In this article, the authors report findings from two large ethnographic case studies in which sources of practice knowledge was a subsidiary theme.

Mapping the journey of cancer patients through the health care system. Part 2: Methodological approaches and basic findings.

This is the second in a series of articles from a line of research whose intent was to construct a complete history of interactions with the health care system. This paper provides details of the methods developed to collect and collate the scattered information regarding the event history (trajectory) that a cancer patient experiences in traveling through the Manitoba health care system from one year prior to diagnosis through to two years post-diagnosis. Survival data were obtained through 1994.

Mapping the journey of cancer patients through health care system. Part 1: developing the research question.

This is the first in a series of articles relating results from research which constructed a complete history of interactions with the health care system from available data sources for all patients diagnosed in 1990 with primary breast, colorectal, or lung tumours in Manitoba from one year prior to diagnosis through to two years post-diagnosis. This article presents the motivation and genesis for this line of research. The study evolved from the question of "What happens to a person who is diagnosed with cancer?" into a major research endeavour encompassing a broad spectrum of philosophic and clinical research questions.

Individual determinants of research utilization: a systematic review.

Context: In order to design interventions that increase research use in nursing, it is necessary to have an understanding of what influences research use.

Objective: To report findings on a systematic review of studies that examine individual characteristics of nurses and how they influence the utilization of research.

Search Strategy: A survey of published articles in English that examine the influence of individual factors on the research utilization behaviour of nurses, without restriction of the study design, from selected computerized databases and hand searches.

Ask and ye shall plan. A health needs assessment of a university population.

Background: In the development process of establishing a Campus Health Resource Centre, a health needs assessment of 691 students was conducted at the University of Manitoba.

Methods: Students were surveyed by their peers to identify the health education needs of this population. The process of the health needs assessment is described and the results have formed the basis for a range of programs and services offered on campus.

Critical issues in interviewing people with traumatic brain injury.

People with cognitive impairments often cannot effectively recall and articulate experiences, feelings, and perceptions. Therefore, interviewing them can be fraught with pragmatic and methodological difficulties. Given this situation, the authors' experience in a study on the allocation of rehabilitative services to survivors of traumatic brain injury is discussed.