An Evidence-Based Health Care Knowledge Integration System: Assessment Protocol.

BACKGROUND: The rapid advancements in health care can make it difficult for general physicians and specialists alike to keep their knowledge up to date. In medicine today, there are deficiencies in the application of knowledge translation (KT) in clinical practice. Some medical procedures are not required, and therefore, no value is added to the patient's care. These unnecessary procedures increase pressures on the health care system's resources, reduce the quality of care, and expose the patients to stress and to other potential risks. KT tools and better access to medical recommendations can lead to improvements in physicians' decision-making processes depending on the patient's specific clinical situation. These tools can provide the physicians with the available options and promote an efficient professional practice. Software for the Evolution of Knowledge in MEDicine (SEKMED) is a technological solution providing access to high-quality evidence, based on just-in-time principles, in the application of medical recommendations for clinical decision-making processes recognized by community members, accreditation bodies, the recommendations from medical specialty societies made available through campaigns such as Choosing Wisely, and different standards or accreditive bodies. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this protocol is to assess the usefulness of the SEKMED platform used within a real working clinical practice, specifically the Centre intégré de santé et des services sociaux de l'Outaouais in Quebec, Canada. To achieve our main objective, 20 emergency physicians from the Hull and Gatineau Hospitals participate in the project as well as 20 patient care unit physicians from the Hull Hospital. In addition, 10 external students or residents studying family medicine from McGill University will also participate in our study. METHODS: The project is divided into 4 phases: (1) orientation; (2) data synthesis; (3) develop and validate the recommendations; and (4) implement, monitor, and update the recommendations. These phases will enable us to meet our 6 specific research objectives that aim to measure the integration of recommendations in clinical practices, the before and after improvements in practices, the value attributed by physicians to recommendations, the user's platform experience, the educational benefits according to medical students, and the organizational benefits according to stakeholders. The knowledge gained during each phase will be applied on an iterative and continuous basis to all other phases over a period of 2 years. RESULTS: This project was funded in April 2018 by the Fonds de soutien à l'innovation en santé et en services sociaux for 24 months. Ethics approval has been attained, the study began in June 2018, the data collection will be complete at the end of December 2019, and the data analysis will start in winter 2020. Both major city hospitals in the Outaouais region, Quebec, Canada, have agreed to participate in the project. CONCLUSIONS: If results show preliminary efficacy and usability of the system, a large-scale implementation will be conducted. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/11754.

Health care professionals' beliefs about using wiki-based reminders to promote best practices in trauma care.

BACKGROUND: Wikis are knowledge translation tools that could help health professionals implement best practices in acute care. Little is known about the factors influencing professionals' use of wikis. OBJECTIVES: To identify and compare the beliefs of emergency physicians (EPs) and allied health professionals (AHPs) about using a wiki-based reminder that promotes evidence-based care for traumatic brain injuries. METHODS: Drawing on the theory of planned behavior, we conducted semistructured interviews to elicit EPs' and AHPs' beliefs about using a wiki-based reminder. Previous studies suggested a sample of 25 EPs and 25 AHPs. We purposefully selected participants from three trauma centers in Quebec, Canada, to obtain a representative sample. Using univariate analyses, we assessed whether our participants' gender, age, and level of experience were similar to those of all eligible individuals. Participants viewed a video showing a clinician using a wiki-based reminder, and we interviewed participants about their behavioral, control, and normative beliefs-that is, what they saw as advantages, disadvantages, barriers, and facilitators to their use of a reminder, and how they felt important referents would perceive their use of a reminder. Two reviewers independently analyzed the content of the interview transcripts. We considered the 75% most frequently mentioned beliefs as salient. We retained some less frequently mentioned beliefs as well. RESULTS: Of 66 eligible EPs and 444 eligible AHPs, we invited 55 EPs and 39 AHPs to participate, and 25 EPs and 25 AHPs (15 nurses, 7 respiratory therapists, and 3 pharmacists) accepted. Participating AHPs had more experience than eligible AHPs (mean 14 vs 11 years; P = .04). We noted no other significant differences. Among EPs, the most frequently reported advantage of using a wiki-based reminder was that it refreshes the memory (n = 14); among AHPs, it was that it provides rapid access to protocols (n = 16). Only 2 EPs mentioned a disadvantage (the wiki added stress). The most frequently reported favorable referent was nurses for EPs (n = 16) and EPs for AHPs (n = 19). The most frequently reported unfavorable referents were people resistant to standardized care for EPs (n = 8) and people less comfortable with computers for AHPs (n = 11). The most frequent facilitator for EPs was ease of use (n = 19); for AHPs, it was having a bedside computer (n = 20). EPs' most frequently reported barrier was irregularly updated wiki-based reminders (n = 18); AHPs' was undetermined legal responsibility (n = 10). CONCLUSIONS: We identified EPs' and AHPs' salient beliefs about using a wiki-based reminder. We will draw on these beliefs to construct a questionnaire to measure the importance of these determinants to EPs' and AHPs' intention to use a wiki-based reminder promoting evidence-based care for traumatic brain injuries.

Healthcare professionals' intentions to use wiki-based reminders to promote best practices in trauma care: a survey protocol.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare professionals are increasingly using wikis as collaborative tools to create, synthesize, share, and disseminate knowledge in healthcare. Because wikis depend on collaborators to keep content up-to-date, healthcare professionals who use wikis must adopt behaviors that foster this collaboration. This protocol describes the methods we will use to develop and test the metrological qualities of a questionnaire that will assess healthcare professionals' intentions and the determinants of those intentions to use wiki-based reminders that promote best practices in trauma care. METHODS: Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, we will conduct semi-structured interviews of healthcare professionals to identify salient beliefs that may affect their future use of wikis. These beliefs will inform our questionnaire on intended behavior. A test-retest of the survey will verify the questionnaire's stability over time. We will interview 50 healthcare professionals (25 physicians and 25 allied health professionals) working in the emergency departments of three trauma centers in Quebec, Canada. We will analyze the content of the interviews and construct and pilot a questionnaire. We will then test the revised questionnaire with 30 healthcare professionals (15 physicians and 15 allied health professionals) and retest it two weeks later. We will assess the internal consistency of the questionnaire constructs using Cronbach's alpha coefficients and determine their stability with the intra-class correlation (ICC). DISCUSSION: To our knowledge, this study will be the first to develop and test a theory-based survey that measures healthcare professionals' intentions to use a wiki-based intervention. This study will identify professionals' salient beliefs qualitatively and will quantify the psychometric capacities of the questionnaire based on those beliefs.