Measuring and Evaluating Clinical Context in Implementation Science Research

Despite the importance of implementing research findings into nursing and health care practice in order to improve care delivery and outcomes, fewer than 50% of these findings ever make it into the practice environments for which they were intended.¹  Many factors affect the uptake of evidence-based practices (EBPs) into routine clinical use, such as the complexity of the innovation, how it is implemented into practice, and the context/environment in which it is implemented. Identification and understanding of the local context are key to developing strategies for overcoming barriers that can impair the uptake, adaptation, and implementation of EBPs in a particular setting. The relevance and measurement of clinical context and how it affects the adoption of new knowledge into practice is one of the most pressing issues for research priorities in the 2026 plan from the National Institutes of Health,²  and for those of the American Nurses Credentialing...