Tailoring an intervention to the educational needs of healthcare professionals in nursing homes: Does it have an impact on the use of an early warning score? Protocol for a pragmatic RCT.

Background and study aims One major challenge in healthcare today is for healthcare professionals to stay up to date on the newest and most reliable research knowledge. Another is to implement new knowledge into complex and busy healthcare settings. This is a threat to patients, as they rely on healthcare professionals to provide them the best possible care. One solution to this, is to educate healthcare professionals in Knowledge Translation (KT) to provide them with skills and tools to handle these challenges. The IMPAKT intervention bundle aims to first work with healthcare professionals in nursing homes to identify their educational needs related to KT. Secondly, tailored to these needs, the researchers will provide an educational program that addresses these needs. Then finally, researchers will support the nursing homes in applying what they learnt. Who can participate? Public nursing homes in a large municipality in Norway were eligible for inclusion. What does the study involve? The researchers will randomly allocate nursing homes to two groups: one group that will receive the IMPAKT intervention bundle, and one group that receives nothing. Then, after a year, the researchers want to see if there is a difference in care provided in the nursing homes that received this bundle, compared to patients in the comparison group. Care will be assessed at patient level outcomes. What are the possible benefits and risks of participating? The potential benefits of participating in this study, includes an increased level of awareness and competencies to stay up to date on research knowledge among healthcare professionals. Moreover, if healthcare professionals in this study succeed with the implementation process during the study period, then a potential benefit is that this may be applied again to different problems. For patients, a potential benefit is they receive care in line with the most reliable research knowledge. In this case, nursing homes are implementing an early warning score, and another potential benefit for patients is a reduction in unnecessary transfer to acute care hospital, and maybe an increase in appropriate transfers. Potential risks of participation is frustration in the staff, regarding inability either personally or organizationally to fulfil expectations of the educational program goals.