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kearney p.m. & pryor j. (2004) Journal of Advanced Nursing 46(2), 162–170 The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and nursing Nursing conceptualizes disability from largely medical and individual perspectives that do not consider its social dimensions. Disabled people are critical of this paradigm and its impact on their health care. The aims of this paper are to review the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), including its history and the theoretical models upon which it is based and to discuss its relevance as a conceptual framework for nursing. The paper presents a critical overview of concepts of disability and their implications for nursing and argues that a broader view is necessary. It examines ICF and its relationship to changing paradigms of disability and presents some applications for nursing. The ICF, with its acknowledgement of the interaction between people and their environments in health and disability, is a useful conceptual framework for nursing education, practice and research. It has the potential to expand nurses’ thinking and practice by increasing awareness of the social, political and cultural dimensions of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AIMS: This paper provides a theoretical understanding of narrative research and its use in research. It aims to expose the ways narrative research, when taken beyond the researcher's lone analysis of text, can contribute to the development of clinical knowledge. BACKGROUND: Methodological approaches involving the construction of narratives are increasingly apparent in the nursing and allied health literature. Narratives, constructed from stories of nursing practice, become texts available for analysis. This is undertaken predominantly by a researcher engaged in a lone activity with little involvement of those contributing the stories. METHODS: This paper is drawn from a critical praxis study of nurse-patient friendship utilizing participatory research processes. The nurses involved in the study were co-researchers in an indepth study of their relationships with patients. FINDINGS: The paper traces the movement from naive story, through individual narratives during interviews with each nursing and demonstrates the changes in understanding about the narrative accounts that occurred during the participatory group process. CONCLUSION: The nurses involved in this study were able, through the use of narrative stories reexamined in a group context, to develop new insights and understandings about their practice. Knowledge generated in these ways remains grounded in the real life world of clinical nursing and gives voice to the complexity of those aspects of nursing practice that are taken for granted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. In this paper we present a theory-based taxonomy of the methods used to implement change in practice. Background. Implementation research is characterized by inconsistent terminology for the methods employed and inattention to differences in the relevance of methods across different disciplines. Studies of the effectiveness of implementation have yielded mixed results. Positive effects shown have been small. The limited success of many efforts to implement change in practice may be due, in part, to the absence of a framework to guide the use of implementation methods. Method. A provisional taxonomy of implementation methods, derived from theory and existing taxonomies, was used to content analyse a convenience sample of 43 reports of empirical studies of the implementation of one or more research-based practice changes involving nurses that had been published between 1995 and 2005. This taxonomy was revised throughout the course of analysis to capture more completely the information in each report. Findings. Following the analysis, nine of the 11 methods in the provisional taxonomy were retained, two were removed and five new methods were identified. The final taxonomy includes 14 implementation methods organized into five categories: (a) increasing coordination; (b) raising awareness; (c) persuasion via interpersonal channels; (d) persuasion via reinforcing belief that behaviour will lead to desirable results and (e) increasing behavioural control. Conclusions. The taxonomy presented here differs from prior taxonomies by focusing on nursing and by providing a clear and mutually exclusive guide to implementation methods. By deriving the initial coding strategy from theory, the taxonomy links the methods to theoretical constructs that may inform the selection of methods across different practice changes and settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AIM: The paper reports a study to develop and test a tool for assessing a range of factors influencing the development of evidence-based practice among clinical nurses. BACKGROUND: Achieving evidence-based practice is a goal in nursing frequently cited by the profession and in government health policy directives. Assessing factors influencing the achievement of this goal, however, is complex. Consideration needs to be given to a range of factors, including different types of evidence used to inform practice, barriers to achieving evidence-based practice, and the skills required by nurses to implement evidence-based care. METHODS: Measurement scales currently available to investigate the use of evidence in nursing practice focus on nurses' sources of knowledge and on barriers to the use of research evidence. A new, wider ranging Developing Evidence-Based Practice questionnaire was developed and tested for its measurement properties in two studies. In study 1, a sample of 598 nurses working at two hospitals in one strategic health authority in northern England was surveyed. In study 2, a slightly expanded version of the questionnaire was employed in a survey of 689 community nurses in 12 primary care organizations in two strategic health authorities, one in northern England and the other in southern England. FINDINGS: The measurement characteristics of the new questionnaire were shown to be acceptable. Ten significant, and readily interpretable, factors were seen to underlie nurses' relation to evidence-based practice. CONCLUSION: Strategies to promote evidence-based practice need to take account of the differing needs of nurses and focus on a range of sources of evidence. The Developing Evidence-Based Practice questionnaire can assist in assessing the specific 'evidencing' tendencies of any given group of nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

winch s., henderson a.&creedy d. (2005) Journal of Advanced Nursing50(1), 20–26Read, Think, Do!: a method for fitting research evidence into practiceThis paper discusses a process for research utilization that overcomes well-known barriers in order to influence clinical decision-making and practice change.Read, Think, Do! is a problem-solving approach to research utilization and practice development which has the potential to overcome barriers to research utilization.Any process for research utilization at the practice level needs to overcome numerous barriers in order to influence clinical decision-making and practice change. Access to research-based knowledge is an obvious first step in the evidence-based approach to care delivery, but is clearly inadequate alone in influencing the improvement of practice.Read, Think, Do! acknowledges the complexity of problem-solving processes from the outset by looking for (1) the evidence, (2) assessing the value to practice, and (3) addressing the social and cultural milieu of the practice setting to ascertain the best strategies for initiating and sustaining practice change. This approach draws distal forms of empirical knowledge that have the capacity to improve patient outcomes into the proximal knowledge base of the clinical nurse. This is achieved by collaboration, planning and evaluation involving all levels of staff and a specialist facilitator, the Clinical Nurse Consultant in evidence-based practice.Read, Think, Do! is a method of research utilization and practice development that has the potential to overcome barriers to research utilization and avoid the‘misplaced concreteness’ that can occur when trying to fit empiricism into practice. By addressing the breadth and diversity of issues surrounding research utilization in a systematic manner it presents a sustainable method for practice change informed by evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]