Implementation science communications
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Implement Sci Commun · Mar 2021
Training registered nurses to conduct pre-implementation assessment to inform program scale-up: an example from the rural Transitions Nurse Program.
Adapting evidence-based practices to local settings is critical for successful implementation and dissemination. A pre-implementation assessment evaluates local context to inform implementation, but there is little published guidance for clinician-implementers. The rural Transitions Nurse Program (TNP) is a care coordination intervention that facilitates care transitions for rural veterans. In year 1 of TNP, pre-implementation assessments were conducted by a centralized project team through multi-day visits at five sites nationwide. In year 2, we tested if local site TNP nurses could conduct pre-implementation assessments using evidence-based tools and coaching from the TNP team. This required developing a multicomponent pre-implementation strategy bundle to guide data collection and synthesis. We hypothesized that (1) nurses would find the pre-implementation assessment useful for tailoring TNP to local contexts and (2) nurses would identify similar barriers and facilitators to those identified at first year sites. ⋯ This proof-of-concept study suggests that evidence-based tools can effectively guide clinician-implementers through the process of conducting a pre-implementation assessment. This approach positively informed TNP implementation and oriented nurses to their local context prior to implementation.