Overview and Summary: Translational Research: From Knowledge to Practice

• Published in: Online journal of issues in nursing 2018-05, Vol.23 (2), p.1-3
• Main Author: Naylor, Mary
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Collaboration; Knowledge; Leadership; Medical research; Mental health; Nurses; Nursing; Older people; Psychiatric-mental health nursing; Scholarly publishing; Teams; Well being
• ISSN: 1091-3734; 1091-3734
• DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol23No02ManOS

Currently, healthcare services provided to people of all ages and at all points on the health-illness continuum are fragmented, expensive, and rarely grounded in evidence. Nurses have been at the forefront in addressing the complex health and social challenges that increasingly diverse individuals, families, and communities confront by developing and rigorously testing innovative solutions. A substantial body of evidence has demonstrated the positive contributions of nurses as leaders and core members of healthcare teams in assuring high value healthcare. However, wide-scale use of these evidence-based solutions has been substantially limited by well recognized barriers. Key among these is the ability to effectively and efficiently translate research findings into practice. The amazing multidisciplinary team that I lead has been attempting to respond to this barrier for more than a decade. Our team's experience reinforces many of the lessons embedded in this series of papers. To set the stage for the key "takeaways" captured in these papers, permit me to provide some background on our team's journey. Over the course of more than a decade, findings from multiple National Institute of Nursing Research funded randomized controlled trials conducted by our team had consistently demonstrated the capacity of the nurse-led, team-based, Transitional Care Model (TCM) to improve the care and outcomes of chronically ill older adults while reducing their healthcare costs (Hirschman, 2015; Naylor et al., 2013). These findings were published in highly respected, peer reviewed journals and received considerable media attention. The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy identified the TCM as a 'top-tiered' evidence-based approach that, if scaled, could have a positive impact on the health and well-being of chronically ill older adults across the United States, while assuring wiser use of societal resources (Coalition for Evidence Based Policy, 2010). Given increased evidence of the human and economic toll associated with poor management of this population's complex care needs, our team was surprised (shocked!) to learn that very few organizations were testing the implementation of the TCM in their systems or using the TCM evidence as basis to redesign their healthcare systems.