Research team engaging nurses to increase effectiveness of interventions
Input from nurses key to sound, evidenced-based practice
Wednesday May 14, 2008 -- Jason Thompson
Dr. Patricia Trbovich says input from frontline staff is essential as researchers at the University Health Network (UHN) investigate the impact of distractions and interruptions on medication delivery.

Because frontline nurses are often responsible for the implementation of interventions, their input is vital to the development of those patient safety efforts.

“We don’t want to go ahead and design these interventions on our own as human factors specialists,” says Trbovich, a human factors specialist and publication and research lead with UHN.

“We want to engage the nurses in the design of these interventions, conduct focus groups with them and really try to understand what they think would work for them.”

In 2007, Trbovich applied for funding from the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) as part of their 2007 Research Competition to study the effect of interruptions in medication delivery.

“We don’t expect that we’ll ever be able to get rid of all interruptions, but (the study) is about trying to understand how we can make clinicians more resilient to those types of interruptions, and to reduce the number of interruptions as well,” Trbovich says.

Irmajean Bajnok, director of international affairs and the best practice guidelines program with the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO), says the inclusion of the nursing perspective in Trbovich’s study is important in relation to the safe administration of medication.

“It is essential that nurses at the point of care are involved in identifying the critical issues that need to be studied by nurse researchers and other researchers,” Bajnok says.

“Such research is necessary to provide evidence related to examining the effects of nursing interventions on patient, nurse and system outcomes and to creating safe and healthy work environments for nurses and for patients.”

Through the study, Trbovich is also aiming to identify if interventions designed by one set of nurses are transferable to nurses at another location.

Trbovich says either way, the results will be informative.

“If we find the interventions work well for both sets of nurses that’s great,” she says. “If we find they don’t work well with the nurses at the (second) centre then we’ll have learnt it’s really important to go through this process of involving nurses from a given institution when you’re designing and developing these interventions and that what works for one might not work for another.”

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