• Elizabeth Murray, Shaun Treweek, Catherine Pope, Anne MacFarlane, Luciana Ballini, Christopher Dowrick, Tracy Finch, Anne Kennedy, Frances Mair, Catherine O'Donnell, Bie Nio Ong, Tim Rapley, Anne Rogers, and Carl May.
• Research Department of Primary Care and Population Health, University College London, Upper Floor 3, Royal Free Hospital, Rowland Hill Street, London NW3 2PF, UK. elizabeth.murray@ucl.ac.uk
• Bmc Med. 2010 Oct 20; 8: 6363.

BackgroundThe past decade has seen considerable interest in the development and evaluation of complex interventions to improve health. Such interventions can only have a significant impact on health and health care if they are shown to be effective when tested, are capable of being widely implemented and can be normalised into routine practice. To date, there is still a problematic gap between research and implementation. The Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) addresses the factors needed for successful implementation and integration of interventions into routine work (normalisation).DiscussionIn this paper, we suggest that the NPT can act as a sensitising tool, enabling researchers to think through issues of implementation while designing a complex intervention and its evaluation. The need to ensure trial procedures that are feasible and compatible with clinical practice is not limited to trials of complex interventions, and NPT may improve trial design by highlighting potential problems with recruitment or data collection, as well as ensuring the intervention has good implementation potential.SummaryThe NPT is a new theory which offers trialists a consistent framework that can be used to describe, assess and enhance implementation potential. We encourage trialists to consider using it in their next trial.

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