April 13, 2022

This month’s Transformative Solutions in Healthcare piece features the full text of an interview with Arlene Bierman, MD, MS, director of the Center for Evidence of Practice Improvement and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The interview was conducted on March 28, 2022 by Bernadette Melnyk, PhD, APRN-CNP, FAANP, FNAP, FAAN, vice president for health promotion, university chief wellness officer and dean of the College of Nursing. 

 

Bern Melnyk:

I am thrilled to have with me today, a very special distinguished person who I had the pleasure of getting to know a few years ago, Dr. Arlene Bierman. She is a wonderful internal medicine specialist, geriatrician, and very important in her role as director of the center for evidence of practice improvement at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). So, Arlene, thank you for joining me today for our Transformative Solutions in Healthcare. I'm going to start by asking you a first question and that is, as we emerge slowly from the COVID-19 pandemic and look optimistically at the post-pandemic world, what are your center's core priority areas?

Arlene Bierman:

Oh, first of all, thank you for that generous introduction. And I'm not sure we're going to be getting to the post-pandemic world that quickly, because we're going to have a lot of people living with the post-acute sequelae of COVID. And unfortunately we don't know how long that's going to last, but I do think we're going to be emerging from the acute crisis eventually. And I think that the COVID-19 crisis really spotlighted a lot of the shortcomings of our health system. And I think it gives us an opportunity to really intervene and improve things. And I think particularly we knew who was most vulnerable, people with chronic disease, much of it preventable. We saw the disparities and we saw where our health system just frankly didn't work as well as it should have. So I think it really highlighted, I think the importance of a lot of the work that AHRQ does to really improve the health system, to get evidence to the point of care and ultimately goal of optimizing the health of individuals and their communities and families.

Bern Melnyk: Absolutely. So, Arlene, I've got a philosophy that I've long had because evidence-based practice, it's one of my deepest passions, but I always say, "In God we trust, but everybody else should bring data to the table." And that's what I so appreciate about AHRQ really and what you are doing with your center. What do you think people's needs are right now, given the state of where we're at, coming hopefully slowly, coming out of COVID, but experience the adverse outcomes that'll follow for quite some time?

Arlene Bierman: Yeah. What a great question. So I think first of all, some of the innovations we did during COVID, you had a new infection, it was affecting so many different people and we didn't know much about it. And we're very involved in doing evidence reviews, synthesizing all the evidence and really it was an opportunity for us to learn how to do living reviews. How do you keep evidence current? How do you link evidence to clinical decision support? So I think a lot of the advances that we did during the pandemic are really going to inform our work going forward. I really do think we learned that most of the people admitted who had serious illness from COVID had multiple chronic conditions, and sort of the need for patient-centered care. How do we reduce risk in people who are high risk and how do we really develop care plans to optimize their health that takes into account all of their conditions, as well as their social context which we know now is really important? I think also we need new models of care.

We realize that primary care could have done a lot more during the pandemic and wasn't tapped to the extent that it could have. But how do we fully integrate primary care into both the bigger health system, as well as public health and communities and how do we make transitions between these sectors seamless? And I think the other thing is that we need two kinds of evidence. We need the clinical evidence, right, and we also need the evidence for how do we organize and deliver care and how do we implement the evidence? So I think our center is working on all of those.

Bern Melnyk: We have this saying, we've had it for almost two decades. It takes about 17 years to translate findings from practice into real world clinical settings to improve, really see the improvements in practice. What do you see that we can do more to help with this more rapid translation of our evidence into clinical practice?

Arlene Bierman: Oh, that's critical. And something that we're working on in a couple of ways. So like I said, we're working on doing these living reviews that stay current with the evidence. We're looking at clinical decision support for both patient-facing and clinician-facing to help people make decisions, to do shared decision making and to make the evidence accessible. How do we make it easy for people to get the evidence they need at the point of care and understand how to use it? And then the other part is we need to know how to implement. So what AHRQ is doing, we have a large dissemination and implementation portfolio, is really integrating quality improvement with implementation science. So we could continue learning, how do we implement better? How do we make sure people are getting... How do we prioritize? What are the interventions that people need and then develop the strategies to accelerate the uptake?

Bern Melnyk: That is so key. So our Fuld National Institute for Evidence-based Practice at Ohio State, we are working with hospitals, healthcare systems all throughout the United States and globe on how to speed that translation of evidence into practice. I would like to say we have made so much progress in this area because we've been beating this drum for so many years, but barriers still exist in so many places that still make it character building for this to happen. And I think you made such a fabulous point when you said Arlene, we've got to make it easy for people because we get bombarded during the course of the day with so much information that it's tough for the practicing person, especially at the bedside to really synthesize and gather this all and then take action. What I love about what your center is doing is you are making it easier for this translation to happen. And I want to throw you a dose of vitamin G for gratitude for doing that for sure.

Arlene Bierman: Yeah. And I think it's also we need to do the research and development differently. We're very interested in partnership research and user-centered design so that we need to make sure that the people on the front line are involved in developing the solutions that will work for them. And we also need to focus on workflow. How do we develop workflows that make sense and make it again, I'm just repeating myself, but easy for people to do the right thing.

Bern Melnyk: Absolutely. We have seen such an uptick in clinician burnout, depression, suicide, we've always had this epidemic going on, but now I've always said we have a mental health pandemic inside of the COVID-19 pandemic. What is your perspective on clinician burnout, mental health right now? Is your center focused at all on that side of things?

Arlene Bierman: Yeah. So you know that AHRQ has funded a lot of the foundational work on clinician burnout. And you also know the quadruple aim includes physician and clinician wellness. And now it's been expanded to the quintuple aim, which is adding in equity. We are absolutely interested in burnout. There was a really interesting paper that came out of our EvidenceNow portfolio that was in Health Affairs, I think in the late fall, by Sam Edwards, where he identified Zero-Burnout Primary Care Practices and what it is, it's the culture, it's how you structure care. So I think there's two ways of dealing with burnout. One is on the individual level and giving people tools for stress management and dealing with trauma. And I'm not going to say that that's not important, but it's necessary, but not sufficient.

And we really need to design workplaces to minimize burnout and we need to appreciate and value the work that people do. And we need to create supportive teams. So we really need as part of all of our improvement interventions really need to focus on the impact on clinicians, and how can they support them to do their job in a way that doesn't burn them out.

Bern Melnyk: Again, you hit on some really key points. At Ohio State we've always said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We focus very heavily on culture here. We've got a menu of evidence-based options for folks to engage in terms of programming. But the other thing I always tell C-suites across the country, you got to fix system issues because if you've got serious system issues, you cannot offer all the evidence-based programming that you want. And it's probably not going to help all that much until you fix these system issues and culture issues. Arlene, what else would you like to share about your AHRQ center and its work at this point? Final, last thoughts and words from you?

Arlene Bierman: Yeah, I think I've highlighted it a little bit, but our dissemination and implementation portfolio, and that's where we take evidence and we really try to understand how to get it into practice. And so we have a whole suite of initiatives. We did EvidenceNow which focused on reducing cardiovascular risk reduction in response to that, we are working with four states in the highest quartile of bad cardiovascular outcomes on hypertension control and smoking cessation. But really working with them. How do they partner with public health? How do they partner with their state health departments? How do we bring everybody to the table to align efforts as well as how do we reach those where the disparities are? Who have the worst outcome? So how do we address health equity as we improve care?

We have another one, you talked about how the COVID, the impact on health professionals. The impact on the population, alcohol is another pandemic right now. So we have another initiative on how do we address screening and you were on the task force, you know this, brief intervention screening and referral for unhealthy drinking and primary care. And we just started another one, which we're very excited about on urinary incontinence in women, because it's a common disease. I call it the Don't Ask, Don't Tell disease. Patients don't want to admit they have it. They're embarrassed. A lot of clinicians don't have the skills to manage it. So they don't want to know about it. They're busy dealing with the diabetes, hypertension are arthritis. Let's forget about that. So really how do we make it easy again for primary care practices to be able to identify screen and treat people with urinary incontinence. And that means partnership with the community, with health educators about behavioral interventions.

It means having collaborative and step care so if you don't feel like, if it didn't work you're stuck, you know who to send them to. So in all of these dissemination and implementation initiatives, it's really learning how to accelerate the uptake of evidence in practice.

Bern Melnyk: Well, I want to thank you for your fantastic leadership, your center, all of its fantastic work. We really appreciate it and know that we look to your center to help us implement best evidence and practice to improve outcomes. Thanks so much for being with me today. Much appreciated.

Arlene Bierman: Oh, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It's been wonderful.

October 21, 2020

by Pat Ford-Roegner

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared 2020 the Year of the Nurse and Midwife in honor of the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society because of her ability to use data to create new standards for sanitation in the army and beyond, thereby decreasing the death rate.

It feels contradictory then, in this special year honoring a pioneer who followed science and evidence to inform care, that major nursing and public health organizations feel compelled to defend the WHO’s credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Academy of Nursing has declared “our continued involvement in WHO is vital,” and the American Public Health Association said that “only with WHO’s coordination can we accelerate the pace of research and generate the critical science based evidence that is needed save lives in the U.S. and around the world.”

Arguments against the WHO seem to follow a wider, controversial pattern of questioning science, scientists and objective fact borne out of vigorous research. A story in The New York Times in August reported, in part, that “public health officials and healthcare professionals say their advice is being undermined and their jobs are complicated by rampant misinformation on social media about COVID-19.” The Times story points to several deaths worldwide of people who followed incorrect advice to “drink highly concentrated alcohol to kill the virus,” and many clinicians complained of patients who demanded unproven or dangerous courses of treatment, then accused the clinicians of lying when they refused.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is actively tracking how the manipulation of or misinformation about science impacts policy and other everyday decisions. UCS states, “these decisions… must be grounded in fact and evidence … science and democracy are indispensable partners in ensuring the public decisions serve the public interest.”

Misinformation and other overt attacks on science – ranging from halting or editing scientific studies to imposing censorship – complicates how nurses do their jobs, but the mission to provide optimal care for patients does not waver. A July blog published by the Joint Commission on Nursing makes the case for nurse action: “In the age of COVID-19, nurses should be clear about their responsibility to confront misinformation, whenever and wherever it is encountered…..with a singular sense of purpose – one nurse, one patient and one family at a time.”

As flu season nears and battlegrounds are established over vaccinations against both influenza and COVID-19, one fact remains abundantly clear: Safe and effective vaccines are among our best long-term defenses against widespread disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adopted the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’s recommendation for all persons aged 6 months and older who do not have contraindications to get a flu shot. Misinformation campaigns, however, have taken their toll on the trust that the general population feel for vaccines; a September poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that if a COVID-19 vaccine was approved before Election Day and made freely available to anyone who wanted it, 54% of Americans would not want to get vaccinated.

The American Nurses Association Policy Statement on Immunization was recently revised due to COVID-19. Because nurses are still considered the most trusted health professionals for the 17th year in Gallup’s ethics survey, ANA makes very clear that nurses must advocate for, educate and advise patients to adhere to recommended vaccination schedules, explaining their need and public health implications. “Patients’ fears and questions regarding immunizations should be acknowledged, and then answered with evidence-based information. Nurses must emphasize that recommended immunizations are safe and necessary.”

The coronavirus pandemic has placed nursing practice squarely in the public eye. A recent article highlighting the nursing science behind nurses as hospital heroes argues that the irreplaceable work of nurses in direct patient care “is an opportunity to consider the science underlying nurses’ work and what this unseen science offers our healthcare systems and communities.”

Science is a driving force in modern nursing through research, education and the movement to advocate for evidence-based practice. The Ohio State University College of Nursing founded the Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice in Nursing and Healthcare with a team of internationally-respected experts to help enhance population health, improve patient outcomes, reduce unnecessary costs and boost clinician satisfaction. As nurses take on the expanding roles in health promotion and communication, misinformation must be overcome by the science, data and evidence that are the keystones to both nurses’ success and patients’ well-being. Science and facts do matter!

Pat Ford-Roegner, RN, MSW, FAAN has previously served as Region IV director at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, chief executive officer at the American Academy of Nursing and health policy expert for Amplify Public Affairs.


The Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice (EBP) in Nursing and Healthcare dreams, discovers and delivers a healthier world through transdisciplinary education, research and policy focused on evidence-based decision making. It is a national hub for the formation, teaching and dissemination of best practices to improve healthcare quality, safety, costs and patient outcomes. Its offerings include immersions, online modular programs, the only globally-recognized EBP certificate and a one-of-a-kind resource hub called the EBP HQ. The Fuld Institute for EBP is comprised of four cores:

  • Academic Core: The goal of the Academic Core is to support creation of evidence-based practitioners through integrating EBP concepts and skills in a meaningful and intentional way across academic programs at all levels.
  • Clinical Core: The Clinical Core helps individuals and organizations learn, understand and leverage evidence-based practice and decision making, including how to build and maintain an EBP culture, capacity and infrastructure, as well as how to measure and sustain success.
  • Community Core: The mission for the Community Core is to help people use evidence for health decisions by reviewing, screening and disseminating evidence-based information for the public.
  • Implementation Science Core: The goal of the Implementation Science core is to advance the use of implementation science and strategies in healthcare to promote adoption and adherence to evidence-based practice with sustainable improvements in care delivery and outcomes.
September 16, 2020

Clinician burnout was a public health epidemic before COVID-19. Now, there is a clinician mental health pandemic within the pandemic. Burnout involves a sense of ineffectiveness, presenteeism, overwhelming emotional exhaustion and depersonalization,1 and is associated with rising rates of anxiety, depression and suicide.2 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health notes that, while nurses and physicians overall have higher proportionate mortality rates from suicide than the general population, Black nurses and physicians experience higher rates than their White counterparts. Findings from a recent rapid systematic review and meta-analysis indicated that viral epidemics result in an almost 30% prevalence of acute stress disorder, anxiety, burnout and depression.3 As of June 2020, the prevalence of anxiety disorders in the U.S. had risen as high as three times those observed in Quarter 2 of 2019, while depression had risen fourfold. Essential workers experienced worse mental health outcomes than the general population.4

Burnout among clinicians not only adversely impacts their own health and well-being, but also threatens the quality and safety of healthcare. A recent national study of nearly 1,800 nurses from 19 healthcare systems across the U.S. showed that nurses in poor mental and physical health reported making more medical errors, with depression being their strongest predictor. Nurses who perceived that their organizations supported their well-being had better mental and physical health outcomes.5 Burnout also results in declines in patient satisfaction, absenteeism, presenteeism and turnover, which are very costly to the healthcare system.6

Healthcare system issues, including long shifts, inadequate patient-staffing ratios, problems with the electronic health record, high acuity patients and personal protective equipment shortages contribute to burnout. To improve clinician health and well-being outcomes, organizations must address system failures, invest in building and sustaining a wellness culture led by a chief wellness officer, and implement evidence-based interventions known to promote the mental health and well-being of their clinicians.

Although clinicians strive to take great care of others, they often do not prioritize their own self-care. As one out of two Americans have a chronic disease and 80% of chronic disease is preventable with healthy lifestyle behaviors,7 clinicians need to engage in regular physical activity, eat healthy, not smoke, limit alcohol if they drink, sleep at least seven hours a night and practice regular stress reduction strategies so that they can be in optimal health and well-being. These self-care behaviors and wellness cultures also need to be established in health sciences colleges to ensure a healthier generation of clinicians.

The Ohio State University is recognized as a national leader in this movement, promoting a sustained wellness culture through a comprehensive, multi-component approach that targets leaders, managers/supervisors, the grassroots and the system, led by a chief wellness officer. The University regularly tracks health and well-being outcomes of clinicians, faculty, staff and students that informs strategies to accomplish its wellness strategic plan. Evidence-based interventions such as Mindfulness in Motion, Health Athlete and MINDSTRONG™ are regularly offered to clinicians, and special partnerships promote health and well-being in areas including staying calm and well in the pandemic, wellness support for front-line nurses and aiding clinicians who experience or survive trauma. In fact, the University’s Safe Campus and Scientific Advisory group formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has prioritized the mental health and well-being of its population and, next month, Ohio State will host its second National Summit on Promoting Well-Being and Resilience in Healthcare Professionals with national leaders and practitioners sharing evidence and best practices to battle clinician burnout.

Other stakeholders listed below are sharing leadership to demand changes in practice, public policy and academic institutions that prioritize clinician and student well-being. We have been a sick care and crisis-oriented healthcare system for way too long; a paradigm shift must occur that emphasizes prevention and early intervention. With an emphasis on prevention, not only would the health and well-being of clinicians be enhanced, patient outcomes would improve and healthcare costs would decline.

How many more clinicians have to die from suicide because of rising depression associated with burnout? How many more medical errors, the third leading cause of death in America,8 will be made by outstanding, well-meaning clinicians suffering from burnout? How many more clinicians will the American healthcare system lose, which will continue to jeopardize the quality and safety of care because it does not invest in supporting their health and well-being? It is time to stop just describing and talking about the problem. Urgent action is needed!

June 05, 2020

Tool aims to address gaps and help incorporate research to improve patient care

A study published this week in the Western Journal of Nursing Research highlights preliminary data for validity of a new tool that helps measure the confidence of nurses in implementation strategies to accelerate the adoption of evidence-based practice in the name of improved patient care and safety.

The study was done by three faculty and staff members from the Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice (EBP) in Nursing and Healthcare at The Ohio State University College of Nursing: Sharon Tucker, PhD, APRN-CNS, NC-BC, EBP-C, FNAP, FAAN; Inga Zadvinskis, PhD, RN; and Linda Connor, PhD, RN, CPN. They developed what the study calls the Implementation Self-efficacy for EBP Scale (ISE4EBP) to measure nurses’ confidence in using EBP implementation strategies. As the publication’s abstract states, “Clinicians may use the scale to identify areas for building implementation confidence to accelerate the uptake of evidence to improve patient care.”

The two-phase study used the tool with staff nurses and nurse leaders and tested the validity and reliability of the responses, as well as how the tool measured confidence. The highest mean scores related to working with leadership, education, use of communication strategies such as fliers or visual aids and mentorship. Low scores related to items such as equipment, obtaining human resources, administrative issues and data dashboards/auditing. According to the authors, “As nurse ratings of organizational readiness scores improved, nurses’ self-efficacy for implementation improved, consistent with our expectations based on the conceptual framework linking self-efficacy and work context.”

“This study gives us a new baseline to work from as we work to fast-track the implementation of evidence-based practice within healthcare organizations,” said Tucker, who also serves as both Grayce Sills Endowed Professor in psychiatric-mental health nursing and director of the College of Nursing’s DNP nurse executive track. “Research tells us that it takes upwards of 17 years to translate research into routine practice, often due to stalls in the implementation and change process. We also know that evidence-based practice improves the quality and safety of patient care, enhances population health, saves money and increases job satisfaction for clinicians. Anything we can do to help nurses and other clinicians build confidence in strategies for implementation can cut down the timeframe to incorporate EBP into practice.”

The Fuld team is currently analyzing data from parallel studies (one with more than 500 nurses with similar findings) and planning future work to develop a guide for interpreting scores for high or low self-efficacy, as well as test interventions designed to build confidence in strategies and enable sustainable practice changes and patient outcomes.

November 16, 2018

In the United States there are up to 400,000 unintended patient deaths every year. Additionally, receiving healthcare is the third leading cause of death in the country. The Institute of Medicine established a goal that by 2020, 90 percent of all healthcare decisions would be evidence based. Today, only 30 percent of decisions are evidence based, which has led to patients receiving roughly 55 percent of the care that they require when entering the current healthcare system.

In an effort to bridge the gap, the Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice in Nursing and Healthcare at The Ohio State University College of Nursing has launched the first and only globally recognized professional evidence-based practice certificate of added qualification (EBP-C). The goal of earning the EBP-C is to demonstrate the expertise that a holder uses evidence to make decisions that improve healthcare for not only patients and their families, but also healthcare providers and their practitioners. Upon completion of the CAQ, healthcare professionals in education or practice will be awarded an EBP certificate of added qualification for a period of five years.

“EBP will help us reach the Quadruple Aim in healthcare,” said Bernadette Melnyk, PhD, RN, APRN-CNP- FAANP, FNAP, FAAN, executive director of the Fuld Institute for EBP, vice president for health promotion, chief wellness officer, dean and professor in the College of Nursing. “Evidence-based practice increases healthcare quality and safety, decreases costs and empowers clinicians to be freely engaged and excited when they come to work every single day.”

Healthcare professionals are experiencing increased levels of burnout and dissatisfaction with their jobs. Evidence-based practice is a strategy to assist healthcare providers in meeting the Quadruple Aim. The Quadruple Aim focuses on creating better outcomes for patients, improving the patient experience, lowering costs and improving the overall clinician experience.

The EBP-C demonstrates expertise in EBP and denotes that the successful applicant has completed the required education component. While EBP may have the most immediate impact with practitioners and clinicians, educating future healthcare professionals is an important long-term outcome. In an effort to improve the future of healthcare overall, the Fuld Institute for EBP is working to embed evidence-based practice as part of every curriculum as this is how today’s students will practice as tomorrow’s professionals.

“A certificate of added qualification in evidence-based practice demonstrates that the holder is an expert in EBP,” said Cindy Beckett, PhD, RNC-OB, LCCE, CHRC, LSS-BB, director of the evidence-based practice certificate programs in the Fuld Institute for EBP and assistant professor in the College of Nursing. “Each person that obtains this certificate of added qualification can lead and mentor integration of best practice changes to positively impact individual and organizational goals.”

Visit the Fuld Institute for EBP to learn more and apply for the EBP-C program.

October 29, 2018

With the goal of improving the health of women and infants, The Ohio State University College of Nursing partnered with the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) in collaboration with ITN productions to produce a video as part of AWHONN’s Partners in Care program. The video addresses research to improve screening techniques to detect depression and anxiety in pregnant and postpartum women.

AWHONN’s Partners in Care program highlights the commitment of the AWHONN community to spread knowledge in working towards solutions on the most critical health issues facing women and newborns.

Faculty within the College of Nursing’s Martha S. Pitzer Center for Women, Children and Youth are conducting vital research to improve the mental health of pregnant and postpartum women, especially in vulnerable populations. “Up to 50 percent of women experience prenatal depression or anxiety,” according to Bernadette Melnyk, Ohio State’s Chief Wellness Officer, Dean of the College of Nursing and Executive Director for the Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice in Nursing and Healthcare. “Women receive prenatal care, but so often providers do not screen for depression and anxiety.”

Check out the video below to learn more about the college’s research and its real world impacts.

August 22, 2018

The Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice in Nursing and Healthcare has awarded its inaugural round of grants. The grants are intended to provide an opportunity to stimulate and advance evidence-based practice (EBP) and implementation science in nursing and healthcare across the United States. 

The grants were awarded to Linda Quinlin, DNP, APRN-CNS, APRN-CNP, ACHPN, and Kerry A. Milner, DNCs, RN, for EBP and research projects, respectively.

Quinlin was awarded the EBP grant for “Quality Improvement Project: Incorporating Evidence Based Practice into the Nursing Culture at Ohio’s Hospice Inc.” The purpose of her project is to incorporate EBP into the nursing culture at Ohio’s Hospice Incorporated (OHI). Implementing EBP will involve a systematic culture change within OHI.

The funding from the grant will be applied to professionally recording a presentation, “Questioning Common Clinical Practices: What does the Evidence Show? A Primer to EBP,” to educate OHI nurses onsite and online about how to begin their journeys with EBP and put science into practice.

Other interventions will be implemented to enrich nurses’ knowledge leading up to OHI Poster Day 2018, a celebration of EBP. This interdisciplinary event is designed to inspire excellence in innovation, research and EBP. The celebration will begin with an EBP presentation by a local nurse researcher and be followed by a poster display of EBP projects completed by OHI nurses.

Milner was awarded the research grant for “Visitation Practices in Magnet and Pathway to Excellence Facilities with Adult Intensive Care Units.” This study aims to answer the questions “What are the visitation policies in adult ICUs in Magnet and Pathway to Excellence designated healthcare facilities?” and “What are the methods for implementation and sustainment of open visitation in these facilities?”

The study stems from the conflict of restrictive visitor policies in adult ICUs, which continue to be the norm across the U.S. Milner hopes to alleviate the lack of research surrounding methods for implementing and sustaining open-visitation policies.

The study will use cross-sectional, sequential and mixed-method survey designs to identify facilities with open-visitation adult ICUs, survey program directors of eligible facilities about methods of implementation and lay the foundation for future studies on the impact of open visitation policies on patient and family outcomes.

Nursing and social work students will be engaged in all aspects of the research under investigator mentorship.

All grant proposals were reviewed by a committee chaired by Sharon Tucker, PhD, RN, FAAN, with members Kirsten M. Hanrahan, ARNP, DNP; Richard Ricciardi, PhD, NP, FAANP, FAAN; Sheila C. Sullivan, PhD, RN; Elisa Jang, RN; Sonia A. Duffy, PhD, RN, FAAN; Beth A. Vottero, PhD, RN, CNE; and Ruth Labardee, DNP, RN, CNL, NEA-BC.

June 13, 2017

The Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice (EBP) in Nursing and Healthcare’s first national summit, to be held Oct. 18-20, 2017, at the Hilton Columbus at Easton, is now open for registration. Early bird registration is available until June 30 for $395; thereafter, registration will be $495.

The summit, “Transforming Healthcare Through Evidence-based Practice,” will address strategies for building and sustaining an EBP culture and environment in institutions, integrating EBP into academic programs, using EBP to guide organizational and health policy, using evidence to inform consumer healthcare decision making and disseminating and implementing research to rapidly move evidence-based interventions into real-world clinical settings. Summit attendees are also invited to join university leadership, national and international leaders, and trailblazers in EBP at a kickoff celebration on the evening of Oct. 18 in the Ohio Union on The Ohio State University campus.

“This summit launches our Fuld Institute, a national center for facilitating the implementation and sustainability of EPB in healthcare systems and the integration of EBP into academic programs,” said Bernadette Melnyk, PhD, RN, CPNP/PMHNP, FAANP, FNAP, FAANvice president for health promotion, dean and professor of the Ohio State College of Nursing, and executive director of the Fuld Institute. “We are thrilled to bring together so many national experts in the field of EBP to provide conference attendees with a deeper understanding of the urgently needed action steps for improving healthcare quality, safety, costs,  and, most importantly, patient outcomes.”

An invitation-only Expert Forum will precede the summit on Oct. 18, at which leaders from nearly 40 national nursing and interprofessional organizations, federal agencies and healthcare entities will discuss the current state of EBP across the disciplines. They will develop action strategies to propel the advancement and sustainability of EBP in healthcare and academic institutions. The findings and recommendations from the Expert Forum will be presented to attendees at the summit the next day.

Summit attendees also will hear the latest recommendations to advance and sustain EBP from keynote speakers:

  • Arlene S. Bierman, MD, MS, director of AHRQ’s Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement
  • Kevin P. Browne, MSN, RN, CCRNsenior director and chief nursing officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
  • Lynn Gallagher-Ford, PhD, RN, DPFNAP, NE-BC, director of the Fuld Institute and the Center for Transdisciplinary Evidence-based Practice
  • Maj. Gen. Dorothy A. Hoggdeputy surgeon general and chief of the Air Force Nurse Corps
  • Alex R. Kemper, MD, MPH, MS, division chief of ambulatory pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (as of August 2017), professor of pediatrics at The Ohio State University and member of the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force
  • Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, The Ohio State University chief wellness officer
  • Lisa Simpson, MB, BCh, MPH, FAAP, president and CEO of AcademyHealth

In 2016, The Ohio State University College of Nursing received a $6.5 million grant from the Helene Fuld Health Trust to create the Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-based Practice (EBP) in Nursing and Healthcare. The Fuld Institute is a national hub for the dissemination, teaching and creation of best practices to improve healthcare quality, safety, costs and patient outcomes. Cores of the organization include transdisciplinary clinical practice; academics; EBP implementation science, partnerships, innovation and policy; and consumer education. 

Ohio State’s Center for Transdisciplinary Evidence-based Practice (CTEP), which established the foundation for the Fuld Institute, has been disseminating and teaching EBP nationally and internationally for the past five years.

The Fuld Institute will provide nursing and transdisciplinary clinicians, leaders, academicians and students with the best and latest evidence to guide:

  • the highest levels of practice to improve healthcare quality, safety, patient outcomes and costs
  • the best teaching strategies for integrating EBP into academic programs
  • practitioners seeking to build and sustain EBP cultures and environments within their own organizations
  • organizational and health policy
  • dissemination of best practices
  • research on the best strategies to rapidly translate effective research-based interventions into real-world clinical settings

For more information or to register, visit fuld.nursing.osu.edu.