NUR 682 Module 8 Dissemination Paper Example

Sharing What We Learned: A Dissemination Plan for a Nurse-Led Catheter Removal Project

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

NUR 682: Generalist Nursing Capstone

Module Eight Dissemination Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Sharing What We Learned: A Dissemination Plan for a Nurse-Led Catheter Removal Project

A capstone that ends with a grade and a filed paper has taught one student. Dissemination is how the lessons reach the nurses who will keep the change going, the leaders who decide whether to spread it and colleagues elsewhere who face the same problem. This paper plans the sharing of a project that introduced nurse-led removal of urinary catheters on a 30-bed medical floor. It identifies the messages worth sharing, the audiences and messengers, the formats for each and how the effect of dissemination will be judged.

Deciding What to Share

Grimshaw et al. (2012) caution against spreading the results of a single study as though they settle a question, and they suggest that the knowledge worth transferring is usually a body of evidence rather than one project. They frame dissemination around a few practical questions: what is being shared, with which audience, through which messenger, by what method and with what intended effect.

Applied to this capstone, the answer to the first question depends on the audience. For the unit, the message is local and practical: how the protocol works, how the unit is doing and what to do next. For leaders, it is whether the change was worth its cost and whether it could work on other floors. For the wider nursing community, it is a case report that adds one well-described unit to a literature dominated by uncontrolled studies, presented with its limits rather than as proof.

Unit Staff: Feedback That Changes Practice

The most important audience is the nurses and physicians on the floor, because the protocol lasts only if they keep using it. Ivers et al. (2012) pooled well over a hundred trials of audit and feedback and found that it usually improves professional practice, though the average gain was modest and results varied widely. Feedback tended to work better when baseline performance was low, when a supervisor or trusted peer delivered it, when it was given more than once, when it was delivered both in writing and in person and when it included clear targets and a plan for action.

The unit plan follows those features. Each month, a night-shift champion will present a one-page summary at huddles on every shift: the run chart of catheter days, the review completion rate, how many removals nurses made on their own authority and any reinsertions, with a target for the next month. A short list of two or three actions, such as reviewing catheters at the start of the night rather than the end, will accompany each summary. Copies go on the staff room wall and into every nurse's inbox.

Leaders and Committees

Hospital leaders need a different product. The student and hospitalist co-lead will present a ten-minute briefing to the nursing quality council and the infection prevention committee three months after full rollout. The briefing will open with the problem in one slide, show the run charts with baseline and post-protocol medians, report balancing measures and the staff time used and end with a specific request: approval to test the protocol on a second medical floor. Leaders respond to clear asks, and a request tied to data is easier to approve than a general summary of success.

The Wider Nursing Community

For audiences outside the hospital, the project will be written up as a quality improvement report. Ogrinc et al. (2016) developed the SQUIRE 2.0 guidelines through a structured consensus process to help authors describe improvement work so readers can judge and adapt it. The guidelines ask authors to explain the problem and what was already known, why the intervention was expected to work, the setting and its features, the intervention in enough detail to copy, how its effects and implementation were studied, the measures and analysis, ethical review, what happened and how it can be interpreted, along with limitations.

Following SQUIRE will make the report more useful than a simple before-and-after summary, because it requires the context and implementation details that other units need. The report will be submitted to a nursing quality journal, and a poster will be proposed for a regional nursing research conference. Table 1 outlines the report.

Table 1. Report Outline Following SQUIRE 2.0

Note. Section content is summarized; the full guideline includes more items.

Timeline and Responsibilities

Sharing begins before results are final. In the first month of the protocol, the champions start monthly huddle summaries so staff hear early numbers, including any reinsertions, rather than waiting for a polished report. At month three, the student and co-lead brief the quality council and infection prevention committee. At month four, the poster abstract is submitted to the regional conference, whose deadline falls in early spring. By month six, the manuscript draft is complete, with the infection preventionist and hospitalist co-lead as coauthors, and the nurse manager takes over the monthly summaries so feedback continues after the student's role ends. Patients also deserve a version: a short note for the unit's family board explaining why catheters now come out sooner.

Judging Whether Dissemination Worked

Dissemination has effects that can be counted. For staff, the measure is whether review completion stays above 90% in the months after the student's role ends. For leaders, it is whether the second floor approves and starts a test. For the wider community, it is acceptance of the poster or manuscript and any requests from other units for the checklist. These measures link dissemination to the purpose Grimshaw and colleagues emphasize: sharing knowledge in order to change practice, not simply to announce results.

Conclusion

The plan sends different messages to different audiences: repeated, targeted feedback to the unit, a data-driven request to leaders and a SQUIRE-guided report and poster to the wider profession. Each format is chosen for what its audience needs to act, and each has a measure of success.

References

Grimshaw, J. M., Eccles, M. P., Lavis, J. N., Hill, S. J., & Squires, J. E. (2012). Knowledge translation of research findings. Implementation Science, 7, Article 50. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-7-50

Ivers, N., Jamtvedt, G., Flottorp, S., Young, J. M., Odgaard-Jensen, J., French, S. D., O'Brien, M. A., Johansen, M., Grimshaw, J., & Oxman, A. D. (2012). Audit and feedback: Effects on professional practice and healthcare outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2012(6), Article CD000259. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD000259.pub3

Ogrinc, G., Davies, L., Goodman, D., Batalden, P., Davidoff, F., & Stevens, D. (2016). SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence): Revised publication guidelines from a detailed consensus process. BMJ Quality & Safety, 25(12), 986-992. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2015-004411