Purpose: The purpose of this article is to describe the differences between quality improvement and implementation science, the urgency for nurses and nurse scientists to engage in implementation science, and international educational opportunities and resources for implementation science.
Organizing construct: There is a push for providing safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable health care. Implementation science plays a key role in adoption and integration of evidence-based practices to improve quality of care.
Methods: We reviewed implementation science programs, organizations, and literature to analyze the roles of nurses and nurse scientists in translating evidence into routine practice.
Findings: Implementation-trained nurses and nurse scientists are needed as part of multidisciplinary teams to advance implementation science because of their unique understanding of contextual barriers within nursing practice. Likewise, nurses are uniquely qualified for recognizing what implementation strategies are needed to improve nursing care across practice settings.
Conclusions: Many international clinical and training resources exist and are supplied to aid interested readers in learning more about implementation science.
Clinical relevance: Half of research evidence never reaches the clinical setting, and the other half takes 20 years to translate into clinical practice. Implementation science-trained nurses are in a position to be excellent improvers for meaningful change in practice.
Keywords: Evidence-based practice; implementation science; quality.
© 2019 Sigma Theta Tau International.