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Executive Summary
* Nurses make many and exceptional contributions to the health and well-being of society.
* The scholarship on nursing's unique practice contributions must be shared with nurses and the broader healthcare community.
* A concise resource for disseminating nursing's important work within the contexts of literature reviews, research reports, quality improvement projects, and evidence-based practice manuscripts is provided.
* Disseminating timely and relevant findings about nursing practice enriches the nursing profession and consequently improves the health of humanity.
WITHOUT DISSEMINATION, innovations, new initiatives and ideas, and findings of research and quality improvement (QI) studies cannot reach nurses and other healthcare professionals who can use this knowledge in their practice. There are varied methods of dissemination such as reports of projects and studies in one's own healthcare setting, presentations at conferences, sharing findings through social media and news outlets, and writing for publication, among others. Some of these approaches, such as social media and publications, disseminate findings more widely than others, such as presenting at a conference.
In all approaches to dissemination, there should be consideration as to the message (what information to communicate), audience (who needs this information to inform practice), and approach (how best to reach this audience with this information) (Brownson, Eyler, Harris, Moore, & Tabak, 2018). By thinking about the message and audience, nurses can more carefully plan their dissemination methods. In some situations, sharing the results of a QI project with unit staff is sufficient to reach the individuals who can use this information to change their processes or practices on the unit. In other cases, however, a wider dissemination approach such as publishing the results of these initiatives in an academic journal is a better strategy to share new knowledge more broadly, making it available to be used as evidence for practice.
Regardless of approach, dissemination has to be planned, and this should be done early as the innovation, initiative, or study is being developed. This early consideration ensures information needed later for dissemination is collected and retained during all phases of the initiative or study. All too often, it only becomes apparent after a project is completed that the work should be published. Without documenting the literature review, process used for implementation, and modifications during the...