National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools

We are interested in sharing real-life examples of your trials and tribulations with finding and using research evidence.

Can you provide a brief example?

Donna

Hi All,

I am a public health nurse in Victoria, BC. I am working with an amazing and committed group of individuals and agencies to develop a program here in Victoria for pregnant or early parenting women with substance use or alcohol use issues, and experiences of mental ill health and/or violence and trauma. Because these issues are inextricably linked and services sometimes will address one issue but not provide services to women who have other issues, we wanted to develop a relatively "low threshold" program.

I have worked in perinatal nursing for almost 30 years and I have also worked in the Woman Abuse/Violence Against Women field for 4 years prior to joining public health.

Our project is fairly complex in that we are a coalition of non-governmental community agencies or representatiave, health providers, academics, and the women who have experienced pregnancy and the challenge of accessing services in their pregnancies or during early parenting. so we are working to bring a number of service agencies with different models of working and broad perspectives, together to create a program which will provide a range of services from a single site. Our program is modeled after Sheway in Vancouver, BC; Maxxine Wright in Surrey BC and Breaking the Cycle in Toronto Ont.

I chair the Program Planning Committee- something I have never done before. All of our over 85 members are contributing to developing our program as an "off the side of the desk" project.

I am writing an "overview" document that attempts to link recent evidence, exisiting evidence, government reports and recommendations, health authority reports and strategic planning documents to the proposed program.

The challenge is that while I have a relatively extensive knowledge of perinatal care and recommendations, I have a very limitted knowledge and experience of working with our targeted population. So I need to find good research that helps to support our vision for program delivery in all areas we plan to deliver services. Our core programming includes:
Perinatal Services
Primary Health Services
Infant/Child Services
Housing
Detox & Stabilization Housing Services
D & A counselling Services
Planning, advocacy and support in working with Ministry of Children & Family Development
Mental Health Services
Nutritional Services
Grief & Loss Services
Student Placement & Research

My trials & tribulations are that I often know there is research and literature "out there" but I have very little experience with the subject matter in order to feel confident that I have the "right" literature or the subject is so broad, I am not certain of how to approach the lit search.

I have requested assistance with this, but the members of our group are so busy, that one other member has provided some literature with respect to children's programming.

My example is not brief, but neither is the challenge. I continue to muddle along and will, no doubt, eventually find some great documents that will help us to do what we want, which is complete the identification of our program goals and objectives.

Any suggestions would be great, as I work on this project in my free time as it is not part of my public health role. Ideas of where or how best to tackle such a broad array of topics when doing a lit review would really reduce my search time and allow me to finish the document.

Thanks, Betty Poag, RN, BSN- Victoria

As a "frontline" nurse, along with my colleagues, we are not part of the decison-making process to a great extent. Many of us are "old timers" who have been around for a little while.

I have observed that student nurses are provided with education and opportunities, while at university, to explore and participate in " Influencing Change" and research activities. It is my plan to return to university for a Masters one day and I did not want to wait until then to learn how to do these things in my own practiceI I discovered I was not alone in this.

I have formed a group with my colleagues at the Victoria Health Unit and we call ourselves the Research and Professional Development Gang.

Our goals are that from our practice we will learn to:
A

-identify research questions
-identify an appropriate research approach
-develop a research plan
-apply for research funding
-approach our management team with a well researched, well designed proposal for consideration
-complete the research
-influence "better practice" for our clients

B

-identify better/best practice approaches related to health promotion/community development/disease prevention with respect to our unique client popultions and needs
-develop a literature review regarding the "issue" identified
-develop a proposal for applying current research to our practice, including gap analysis/budget/program plan- recognizing budget challenges and workload issues in our health authority
-present a thoughtful, well articulated, proposal to our management team for consideration

The goal of our group overall is to:

-continue to learn
-to learn to work effectively as catalysts for practice change
-to develop skills in knowledge transfer
-to develop capacity in nursing research
-to have fun together!

We have met a number of times and are struggling with our first area of interest for research. We have a mentor who is fabulous and I beleive we will begin a group project in the next year. Then, once we have some ideas of what we can do, who knows?!

What was of particular interest to me, is there are a number of nurses who have worked in public health for years and who are closer to retirement than they are to their nurses training. They have signed on. So much of what is provided by employers, targets the staff who are developing their nursing skills. Once a nurse reaches the level of competent, there is very little to excite and inspire them to continue to develop and grow. We may never have "Magnet Hospitals or Health Districts/Authorities" in Canada, but we can provide enriching experiences for those of us who are still interested in learning and in providing the best service to our clients.

My feeling has been, if it isn't here, create it and that is what we are trying to do in our health unit.

...That said, we still need to identify a small study project that we can learn from... We meet again in Sept. so we will see. Any suggestions or ideas will be gratefully accepted!
Betty Poag, RN, BSN

Betty
To get to an efficient search, it is helpful to be clear about the question.

To begin, it is useful to do the PICO format:
P population
I intervention
C comparison
O outcomes

Can you send the PICO for your program? It may be that there are several interventions that may be part of your program. If so, it is probably best to do a separate search for each.

Donna