In this episode of The AJN Podcast, Kathleen Russell-Babin, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, ACNS-BC, vice president of professional practice at Inova Health System in Falls Church, VA, discusses implementation science (IS). Russell-Babin is the lead author of the first article in a new series for AJN, Applying Implementation Science. The article describes how a multisite health care organization developed a systemwide nurse-led IS Specialist program within a shared governance model. Russell-Babin shared, “The series will take each of our first five projects across our health care system and show concretely how we used our 10-step process or toolkit. It will help readers to visualize the realities of the methods.”

In a discussion after the episode was recorded, she added, “This process is not a quick fix. It is systematic and takes time. Depending on the topic, sometimes the barriers are more than you expect. But as Weiner and colleagues wrote, partial implementation gets partial results and so staying with the process and using mapped strategies is worth the effort.”

The article is open access and can be found here: https://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/fulltext/2023/12000/a_nurse_led_implementation_science_specialist.22.aspx.

Follow us through the series and learn how your organization can use implementation science to promote evidence-based practice and improve patient care.