Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: The gap between evidence and practice is important for patient safety. Besides resistance to change, scarce leadership support, resource availability, access and appraisal of evidence are also contributing factors. To reduce this gap, a collaborative forum in hospital patient safety was recently launched in Argentina, integrating patient safety practitioners and patient representatives. Experiences are shared and evidence is disseminated at the forum.
Objective: To provide an exploratory description of the barriers to accessing and assessing the evidence in a professional community of interest in patient safety.
Methods: After a literature review on instruments to reveal the presence of barriers, we developed a preliminary 25-item survey that was tested to confirm understanding. No qualitative techniques were conducted at this time, given the exploratory purpose of this report. The survey was distributed among the participants of the forum, who completed it online, to ensure confidentiality, after giving consent.
Results: 40 surveys were collected (response rate 41%). The distribution of responders was 55.81% physicians, 27.91% nurses, 11.63% pharmaceutics and others 4.65%. 73.71% have more than 15 years working at the institute. 36.59% belonged to hospitals larger than 200 beds. We will describe the frequency of responses on the presence of certain barriers. Knowledge of The Cochrane Library was 72.5% but only 52.5% knew how to interpret a meta-analysis. Internet connection was not an issue for any responder.
Conclusions: Many barriers were present among patient safety practitioners. Several findings will be confirmed in a larger study, which will also promote the use of knowledge translation techniques that will surely reduce the gap. This line of work may help to prioritize systematic reviews in this field to reduce the impact of such barriers.
Objective: To provide an exploratory description of the barriers to accessing and assessing the evidence in a professional community of interest in patient safety.
Methods: After a literature review on instruments to reveal the presence of barriers, we developed a preliminary 25-item survey that was tested to confirm understanding. No qualitative techniques were conducted at this time, given the exploratory purpose of this report. The survey was distributed among the participants of the forum, who completed it online, to ensure confidentiality, after giving consent.
Results: 40 surveys were collected (response rate 41%). The distribution of responders was 55.81% physicians, 27.91% nurses, 11.63% pharmaceutics and others 4.65%. 73.71% have more than 15 years working at the institute. 36.59% belonged to hospitals larger than 200 beds. We will describe the frequency of responses on the presence of certain barriers. Knowledge of The Cochrane Library was 72.5% but only 52.5% knew how to interpret a meta-analysis. Internet connection was not an issue for any responder.
Conclusions: Many barriers were present among patient safety practitioners. Several findings will be confirmed in a larger study, which will also promote the use of knowledge translation techniques that will surely reduce the gap. This line of work may help to prioritize systematic reviews in this field to reduce the impact of such barriers.