Translating knowledge into best practice care bundles: a pragmatic strategy for EBP implementation via moving postprocedural pain management nursing guidelines into clinical practice.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To describe quantitative and qualitative best evidence as sources for practical interventions usable in daily care delivery in order to integrate best evidence into clinical decision-making at local practice settings. To illustrate the development, implementation and evaluation of a pain management nursing care bundle based on a clinical practice guideline via a real-world clinical exemplar.

BACKGROUND: Successful implementation of evidence-based practice requires consistent integration of best evidence into daily clinical decision-making. Best evidence comprises high-quality knowledge summarised in systematic reviews and translated into guidelines. However, consistent integration of guidelines into care delivery remains challenging, partly due to guidelines not being in a usable form for daily practice or relevant for the local context.

DESIGN: A position paper with a clinical exemplar of a nurse-led, evidence-based quality improvement project to design, implement and evaluate a pain management care bundle translated from a national nursing guideline.

METHODS: A pragmatic approach to integrating guidelines into daily practice is presented. Best evidence from a national nursing guideline was translated into a pain management care bundle and integrated into daily practice in 15 medical-surgical (med-surg) units of nine hospitals of a large university hospital system in Finland.

CONCLUSIONS: Translation of best evidence from guidelines into usable form as care bundles adapted to the local setting may increase implementation and uptake of guidelines and improve quality and consistency of care delivery.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: A pragmatic approach to translating a nursing guideline into a pain management care bundle to incorporate best evidence into daily practice may help achieve more consistent and equitable integration of guidelines into care delivery, and better quality of pain management and patient outcomes.