Needed: A knowledge translation skill set

Abstract

Congratulations to the Cochrane Collaboration for twenty years of producing high quality systematic reviews focused on the effects of health care interventions. Although believed to be by some, predominantly for the medical professions, the Cochrane Library contains information for a variety of health care professions. Mistiaen et al. (2004) and Geurden et al. (2012) reviewed the contents of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in 2002 to identify nursing interventions and from 1996 to 2009 to identify nursing related activities (i.e. care, prevention, education, clinical) respectively. Of the 150 systematic reviews examined, Mistiaen et al. (2004) concluded that 60% contained no evidence to guide practice. Geurden et al. (2012) goal was to explore the relevance of the reviews to nursing and found that 21% were of direct interest to nurses. Although small in number, the results of these two studies show that systematic reviews related to nursing can be found in the Cochrane Library. In 2009, the Cochrane Nursing Care Field (CNCF) was officially registered with the Cochrane Collaboration. The core functions of the Nursing Care Field are to support Cochrane Review Groups in the preparation of reviews relevant to nursing, to enhance the dissemination and use of Cochrane reviews, and to promote perspectives relevant to those providingnursingcare.Therearenomembershipfeesandanyone withaninterest in nursing care can join. Additional information about the CNCF can be found at http://cncf.cochrane.org/. It is anticipated that through the Field, an increased number of systematic reviews related to nursing will be produced. Although the Cochrane Library is widely known and respected in nursing and the number of systematic reviews related to nursing care in the Library is increasing, nurses' still lack the necessary skills to understand the results of research and how to then translate and implement these results into practice. There are numerous articles citing nurses' lack of knowledge about systematic reviews, lack of critical appraisal skills, and minimal or no use of research results. In addition, Grimshaw et al. (2012) concluded that in order to have successful knowledge translation, the nurse must be able to analyze and consider the stakeholders' views, analyze the organizational infrastructure, and perform an assessment of the likely barriers and facilitators. Nurse educators can play an important role in developing this skill set by educating students on the process of systematic review, comprehension of the results of systematic reviews and strategies to translate and implement this evidence into practice. A review of the articles pub