Evaluating Factors of Implementation and Sustainability within an Evidence-Based Practice Fellowship Program

This project aimed to examine the long term outcomes of an evidence-based practice (EBP) fellowship program at one institution, and to explore the facilitators and barriers of each of the fellow-led initiatives. The evaluation of implementation science factors included the longitudinal effects of patient and process outcomes through original project data collected and from quality databases over the entire period of the fellowship program (a span of 10 years). There was a total of 18 EBP initiatives that have attempted to implement a practice change. The factors that influenced implementation and sustainability of the practice changes was performed through retrospective review using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) guiding framework, which analyzed the EBP initiatives to determine which implementation factors contributed to its success or failure. Some of the project details that were analyzed included infrastructure, training, marketing, key stakeholder involvement, specific implementation strategies, and processes that were utilized to implement the practice change. Thirteen of the 18 projects were full implemented and sustained over a period of at least two years, with 100% of those projects' practice changes still practiced currently on the unit. An average of 88% of the CFIR implementation factors were present for all 18 projects. Out of the 15 selected characteristics that were evaluated, nine of the implementation factors were present at least 90% of time. This shows the importance of implementation science factors as a facilitator to promote the uptake of evidence-based practice changes in the clinical setting.A five-year embargo was granted for this item