Are Healthcare Organizations Ready for Change? Comment on "Development and Content Validation of a Transcultural Instrument to Assess Organizational Readiness for Knowledge Translation in Healthcare Organizations: The OR4KT"

Abstract

Worldwide most health systems are facing a series of common challenges characterized by the increasing burden of chronic diseases and multimorbidity, and the accelerated pace of biomedical and technological innovations, on the other side. There is a growing recognition that many changes are needed at the macro, meso and micro management levels to tackle these challenges. Therefore, knowing if healthcare organizations are ready for change is a key issue, as high organizational readiness for change (ORC) has been positively related with higher organizational effort and staff motivation for overcoming barriers and setbacks in change endeavours. In practice, readiness for change is not commonly measured and there is a need of adequate metrics for it. In this commentary, a new tool for measuring readiness change is reviewed, the OR4KT. It has been developed based on a solid theoretical background and with the involvement of experts and potential users in the design and it has been tested and validated in three languages and in different organizational settings. Although its generalizability needs to be further tested, it seems to be a promising and useful tool to diagnose if organizations are ready to implement evidence-informed changes. A broader recognition of the key role that the science of implementation can play in the success of much needed transformations in healthcare provides a good opportunity for the dissemination of the OR4KT.