Uncovering the processes of knowledge transformation: the example of local evidence-informed policy-making in United Kingdom healthcare.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare policy-makers are expected to develop 'evidence-based' policies. Yet, studies have consistently shown that, like clinical practitioners, they need to combine many varied kinds of evidence and information derived from divergent sources. Working in the complex environment of healthcare decision-making, they have to rely on forms of (practical, contextual) knowledge quite different from that produced by researchers. It is therefore important to understand how and why they transform research-based evidence into the knowledge they ultimately use. METHODS: We purposively selected four healthcare-commissioning organisations working with external agencies that provided research-based evidence to assist with commissioning; we interviewed a total of 52 people involved in that work. This entailed 92 interviews in total, each lasting 20-60 minutes, including 47 with policy-making commissioners, 36 with staff of external agencies, and 9 with freelance specialists, lay representatives and local-authority professionals. We observed 25 meetings (14 within the commissioning organisations) and reviewed relevant documents. We analysed the data thematically using a constant comparison method with a coding framework and developed structured summaries consisting of 20-50 pages for each case-study site. We iteratively discussed and refined emerging findings, including cross-case analyses, in regular research team meetings with facilitated analysis. Further details of the study and other results have been described elsewhere. RESULTS: The commissioners' role was to assess the available care provision options, develop justifiable arguments for the preferred alternatives, and navigate them through a tortuous decision-making system with often-conflicting internal and external opinion. In a multi-transactional environment characterised by interactive, pressurised, under-determined decisions, this required repeated, contested sensemaking through negotiation of many sources of evidence. Commissioners therefore had to subject research-based knowledge to multiple 'knowledge behaviours'/manipulations as they repeatedly re-interpreted and recrafted the available evidence while carrying out their many roles. Two key 'incorporative processes' underpinned these activities, namely contextualisation of evidence and engagement of stakeholders. We describe five Active Channels of Knowledge Transformation - Interpersonal Relationships, People Placement, Product Deployment, Copy, Adapt and Paste, and Governance and Procedure - that provided the organisational spaces and the mechanisms for commissioners to constantly reshape research-based knowledge while incorporating it into the eventual policies that configured local health services. CONCLUSIONS: Our new insights into the ways in which policy-makers and practitioners inevitably transform research-based knowledge, rather than simply translate it, could foster more realistic and productive expectations for the conduct and evaluation of research-informed healthcare provision.

Barriers to GPs identifying patients at the end-of-life and discussions about their care: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Identification of patients at the end-of-life is the first step in care planning and many general practices have Palliative Care Registers. There is evidence that these largely comprise patients with cancer diagnoses, but little is known about the identification process. OBJECTIVE: To explore the barriers that hinder GPs from identifying and registering patients on Palliative Care Registers. METHODS: An exploratory qualitative approach was undertaken using semi-structured interviews with GPs in South West England. GPs were asked about their experiences of identifying, registering and discussing end-of-life care with patients. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically. RESULTS: Most practices had a Palliative Care Register, which were mainly composed of patients with cancer. They reported identifying non-malignant patients at the end-of-life as challenging and were reluctant to include frail or elderly patients due to resource implications. GPs described rarely using prognostication tools to identify patients and conveyed that poor communication between secondary and primary care made prognostication difficult. GPs also detailed challenges around talking to patients about end-of-life care. CONCLUSIONS: Palliative Care Registers are widely used by GPs for patients with malignant diagnoses, but seldom for other patients. The findings from our study suggest that this arises because GPs find prognosticating for patients with non-malignant disease more challenging. GPs would value better communication from secondary care, tools for prognostication and training in speaking with patients at the end-of-life enabling them to better identify non-malignant patients at the end-of-life.

Embracing complexity and uncertainty to create impact: exploring the processes and transformative potential of co-produced research through development of a social impact model.

The potential use, influence and impact of health research is seldom fully realised. This stubborn problem has caused burgeoning global interest in research aiming to address the implementation 'gap' and factors inhibiting the uptake of scientific evidence. Scholars and practitioners have questioned the nature of evidence used and required for healthcare, highlighting the complex ways in which knowledge is formed, shared and modified in practice and policy. This has led to rapid expansion, expertise and innovation in the field of knowledge mobilisation and funding for experimentation into the effectiveness of different knowledge mobilisation models. One approach gaining prominence involves stakeholders (e.g. researchers, practitioners, service users, policy-makers, managers and carers) in the co-production, and application, of knowledge for practice, policy and research (frequently termed integrated knowledge translation in Canada). Its popularity stems largely from its potential to address dilemmas inherent in the implementation of knowledge generated using more reductionist methods. However, despite increasing recognition, demands for co-produced research to illustrate its worth are becoming pressing while the means to do so remain challenging. This is due not only to the diversity of approaches to co-production and their application, but also to the ways through which different stakeholders conceptualise, measure, reward and use research. While research co-production can lead to demonstrable benefits such as policy or practice change, it may also have more diffuse and subtle impact on relationships, knowledge sharing, and in engendering culture shifts and research capacity-building. These relatively intangible outcomes are harder to measure and require new emphases and tools. This opinion paper uses six Canadian and United Kingdom case studies to explore the principles and practice of co-production and illustrate how it can influence interactions between research, policy and practice, and benefit diverse stakeholders. In doing so, we identify a continuum of co-production processes. We propose and illustrate the use of a new 'social model of impact' and framework to capture multi-layered and potentially transformative impacts of co-produced research. We make recommendations for future directions in research co-production and impact measurement.

Exploring the relationship between general practice characteristics and attendance at Walk-in Centres, Minor Injuries Units and Emergency Departments in England 2009/10-2012/2013: a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: The UK National Health Service Emergency Departments (ED) have recently faced increasing attendance rates. This study investigated associations of general practice and practice population characteristics with emergency care service attendance rates. METHODS: A longitudinal design with practice-level measures of access and continuity of care, patient population demographics and use of emergency care for the financial years 2009/10 to 2012/13. The main outcome measures were self-referred discharged ED attendance rate, and combined self-referred discharged ED, self-referred Walk-in Centre (WiC) and self-referred Minor Injuries Unit (MIU) attendance rate per 1000 patients. Multilevel models estimated adjusted regression coefficients for relationships between patients' emergency attendance rates and patients' reported satisfaction with opening hours and waiting time at the practice, proportion of patients having a preferred GP, and use of WiC and MIU, both between practices, and within practices over time. RESULTS: Practice characteristics associated with higher ED attendance rates included lower percentage of patients satisfied with waiting time (0.22 per 1% decrease, 95%CI 0.02 to 0.43) and lower percentage having a preferred GP (0.12 per 1% decrease, 95%CI 0.02 to 0.21). Population influences on higher attendance included more elderly, more female and more unemployed patients, and lower male life-expectancy and urban conurbation location. Net reductions in ED attendance were only seen for practices whose WiC or MIU attendance was high, above the 60th centile for MIU and above the 75th centile for WiC. Combined emergency care attendance fell over time if more patients within a practice were satisfied with opening hours (-0.26 per 1% increase, 95%CI -0.45 to -0.08). CONCLUSION: Practices with more patients satisfied with waiting time, having a preferred GP, and using MIU and WIC services, had lower ED attendance. Increases over time in attendance at MIUs, and patient satisfaction with opening hours was associated with reductions in service use.

The researchers' role in knowledge translation: a realist evaluation of the development and implementation of diagnostic pathways for cancer in two United Kingdom localities.

BACKGROUND: In examining an initiative to develop and implement new cancer diagnostic pathways in two English localities, this paper evaluates 'what works' and examines the role of researchers in facilitating knowledge translation amongst teams of local clinicians and policy-makers. METHODS: Using realist evaluation with a mixed methods case study approach, we conducted documentary analysis of meeting minutes and pathway iterations to map pathway development. We interviewed 14 participants to identify the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes (CMOs) that led to successful pathway development and implementation. Interviews were analysed thematically and four CMO configurations were developed. RESULTS: One site produced three fully implemented pathways, while the other produced two that were partly implemented. In explaining the differences, we found that a respected, independent, well-connected leader modelling partnership working and who facilitates a local, stable group that agree about the legitimacy of the data and project (context) can empower local teams to become sufficiently autonomous (mechanism) to develop and implement research-based pathways (outcome). Although both teams designed relevant, research-based cancer pathways, in the site where the pathways were successfully implemented the research team merely assisted, while, in the other, the research team drove the initiative. CONCLUSION: Based on our study findings, local stakeholders can apply local and research knowledge to develop and implement research-based pathways. However, success will depend on how academics empower local teams to create autonomy. Crucially, after re-packaging and translating research for local circumstances, identifying fertile environments with the right elements for implementation and developing collaborative relationships with local leaders, academics must step back.

Towards improving diagnosis of memory loss in general practice: TIMeLi diagnostic test accuracy study protocol.

BACKGROUND: People with cognitive problems, and their families, report distress and uncertainty whilst undergoing evaluation for dementia and perceive that traditional diagnostic evaluation in secondary care is insufficiently patient centred. The James Lind Alliance has prioritised research to investigate the role of primary care in supporting a more effective diagnostic pathway, and the topic is also of interest to health commissioners. However, there are very few studies that investigate the accuracy of diagnostic tests for dementia in primary care. METHODS: We will conduct a prospective diagnostic test accuracy study to evaluate the accuracy of a range of simple tests for diagnosing all-cause-dementia in symptomatic people aged over 70 years who have consulted with their general practitioner (GP). We will invite eligible people to attend a research clinic where they will undergo a range of index tests that a GP could perform in the surgery and also be assessed by a specialist in memory disorders at the same appointment. Participating GPs will request neuroimaging and blood tests and otherwise manage patients in line with their usual clinical practice. The reference standard will be the consensus judgement of three experts (neurologist, psychiatrist and geriatrician) based on information from the specialist assessment, GP records and investigations, but not including items in the index test battery. The target condition will be all-cause dementia but we will also investigate diagnostic accuracy for sub-types where possible. We will use qualitative interviews with patients and focus groups with clinicians to help us understand the acceptability and feasibility of diagnosing dementia in primary care using the tests that we are investigating. DISCUSSION: Our results will help clinicians decide on which tests to perform in someone where there is concern about possible dementia and inform commissioning of diagnostic pathways.

Exploring the relationship between general practice characteristics, and attendance at walk-in centres, minor injuries units and EDs in England 2012/2013: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: For several years, EDs in the UK NHS have faced considerable increases in attendance rates. Walk-in centres (WiCs) and minor injuries units (MIUs) have been suggested as solutions. We aimed to investigate the associations between practice and practice population characteristics with ED attendance rates or combined ED/WiC/MIU attendance, and the associations between WiC/MIU and ED attendance. METHODS: We used general practice-level data including 7462 English practices in 2012/2013 and present adjusted regression coefficients from linear multivariable analysis for relationships between patients' emergency attendance rates and practice characteristics. RESULTS: Every percentage-point increase in patients reporting inability to make an appointment was associated with an increase in emergency attendance by 0.36 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.66) per 1000 population. Percentage-point increases in patients unable to speak to a general practitioner (GP)/nurse within two workdays and patients able to speak often to their preferred GP were associated with increased emergency attendance/1000 population by 0.23 (95% CI 0.05 to 0.42) and 0.10 (95% CI 0.00 to 0.19), respectively. Practices in areas encompassing several towns (conurbations) had higher attendance than rural practices, as did practices with more non-UK-qualified GPs. Practice population characteristics associated with increased emergency attendance included higher unemployment rates, higher percentage of UK whites and lower male life expectancy, which showed stronger associations than practice characteristics. Furthermore, higher MIU or WiC attendance rates were associated with lower ED attendance rates. CONCLUSIONS: Improving availability of appointments and opportunities to speak a GP/nurse at short notice might reduce ED attendance. Establishing MIUs and WiCs might also reduce ED attendance.

What is the perceived impact of Alexander technique lessons on health status, costs and pain management in the real life setting of an English hospital? The results of a mixed methods evaluation of an Alexander technique service for those with chronic back pain.

BACKGROUND: Randomised controlled trial evidence indicates that Alexander Technique is clinically and cost effective for chronic back pain. The aim of this mixed methods evaluation was to explore the role and perceived impact of Alexander Technique lessons in the naturalistic setting of an acute hospital Pain Management Clinic in England. METHODS: To capture changes in health status and resource use amongst service users, 43 service users were administered three widely used questionnaires (Brief Pain Inventory, MYMOP and Client Service Resource Inventory) at three time points: baseline, six weeks and three months after baseline. We also carried out 27 telephone interviews with service users and seven face-to-face interviews with pain clinic staff and Alexander Technique teachers. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics and qualitative data were analysed thematically. RESULTS: Those taking Alexander Technique lessons reported small improvements in health outcomes, and condition-related costs fell. However, due to the non-randomised, uncontrolled nature of the study design, changes cannot be attributed to the Alexander Technique lessons. Service users stated that their relationship to pain and pain management had changed, especially those who were more committed to practising the techniques regularly. These changes may explain the reported reduction in pain-related service use and the corresponding lower associated costs. CONCLUSIONS: Alexander Technique lessons may be used as another approach to pain management. The findings suggests that Alexander Technique lessons can help improve self-efficacy for those who are sufficiently motivated, which in turn may have an impact on service utilisation levels.

Evidence based policy making and the 'art' of commissioning - how English healthcare commissioners access and use information and academic research in 'real life' decision-making: an empirical qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Policymakers such as English healthcare commissioners are encouraged to adopt 'evidence-based policy-making', with 'evidence' defined by researchers as academic research. To learn how academic research can influence policy, researchers need to know more about commissioning, commissioners' information seeking behaviour and the role of research in their decisions. METHODS: In case studies of four commissioning organisations, we interviewed 52 people including clinical and managerial commissioners, observed 14 commissioning meetings and collected documentation e.g. meeting minutes and reports. Using constant comparison, data were coded, summarised and analysed to facilitate cross case comparison. RESULTS: The 'art of commissioning' entails juggling competing agendas, priorities, power relationships, demands and personal inclinations to build a persuasive, compelling case. Policymakers sought information to identify options, navigate ways through, justify decisions and convince others to approve and/or follow the suggested course. 'Evidence-based policy-making' usually meant pragmatic selection of 'evidence' such as best practice guidance, clinicians' and users' views of services and innovations from elsewhere. Inconclusive or negative research was unhelpful in developing policymaking plans and did not inform disinvestment decisions. Information was exchanged through conversations and stories, which were fast, flexible and suited the rapidly changing world of policymaking. Local data often trumped national or research-based evidence. Local evaluations were more useful than academic research. DISCUSSION: Commissioners are highly pragmatic and will only use information that helps them create a compelling case for action.Therefore, researchers need to start producing more useful information. CONCLUSIONS: To influence policymakers' decisions, researchers need to 1) learn more about local policymakers' priorities 2) develop relationships of mutual benefit 3) use verbal instead of writtencommunication 4) work with intermediaries such as public health consultants and 5) co-produce local evaluations.

How commissioning affects community nursing.

Community nurses have direct experience of how changes in the local health economy affect the quality of care patients receive, so it is important that they engage with commissioning to influence decisions made about the quality and direction of their service. This article seeks to demystify commissioning priorities by drawing on findings from a survey of Commissioning for Quality and Innovation indicators for community nursing conducted in England, 2014-15. The article focuses specifically on organisational goals, highlighting the impact of the Francis report and other NHS priorities on quality assessment in community nursing.

What works in 'real life' to facilitate home deaths and fewer hospital admissions for those at end of life?: results from a realist evaluation of new palliative care services in two English counties.

BACKGROUND: WE EVALUATED END OF LIFE CARE SERVICES IN TWO ENGLISH COUNTIES INCLUDING: coordination centres, telephone advice line, 'Discharge in Reach' nurses, a specialist community personal care team and community nurse educators. Elsewhere, we published findings detailing high family carer satisfaction and fewer hospital admissions, Accident and Emergency attendances and hospital deaths for service users compared to controls. The aim of this paper is to discuss what contributed to those outcomes. METHODS: Using realist evaluation, data collection included documentation (e.g. referral databases), 15 observations of services and interviews with 43 family carers and 105 professionals. Data were analysed using framework analysis, applying realist evaluation concepts. Findings were discussed at successive team meetings and further data was collected until team consensus was reached. RESULTS: Services 'worked' primarily for those with cancer with 'fast track' funding who were close to death. Factors contributing to success included services staffed with experienced palliative care professionals with dedicated (and sufficient) time for difficult conversations with family carers, patients and/or clinical colleagues about death and the practicalities of caring for the dying. Using their formal and informal knowledge of the local healthcare system, they accessed community resources to support homecare and delivered excellent services. This engendered confidence and reassurance for staff, family carers and patients, possibly contributing to less hospital admissions and A&E attendances and more home deaths. CONCLUSIONS: With demand for 24-hour end of life care growing and care provision fragmented across health and social care boundaries, services like these that cut across organisational sectors may become more important. They offer an overview to help navigate those desiring a home death through the system.

"Earthly Angels"? A qualitative study of the domiciliary care worker role in meeting the needs of families caring for those dying at home.

OBJECTIVE: Relatively little attention has been paid to optimum ways in which community-based care services can support family caregivers in the context of end-of-life care at home. This paper addresses such concerns by focusing on the services provided by domiciliary care workers. METHOD: We draw on qualitative formal interviews with 42 family members, 1 patient, and 6 staff, as well as observation sessions and informal interviews with additional family caregivers and staff, to examine the aspects of domiciliary care perceived to be of most value. In particular, we compare and contrast family caregivers' experience of the support provided by generic domiciliary care workers with that of a team of specialist domiciliary care workers. RESULTS: Our findings show that specialist domiciliary care workers had sufficient time and expertise to meet family caregivers' physical and emotional needs in sensitive, proactive, and family-centered ways, and that these attributes were not so prominent in the services received from generic domiciliary care workers. SIGNIFICANCE OF RESULTS: The availability to families of targeted support from an appropriately trained and carefully monitored team of specialist domiciliary care workers, able to operate flexibly and with staff consistency, appears to be an important foundation on which to build greater confidence in the reality of a good death at home.

Made to measure? Assessing feasibility of quality indicators for district nursing.

UNLABELLED: Scant empirical information exists regarding the quality of district nursing (DN) services. This article reports the testing of 31 quality indicators (QI) in practice. METHOD: Twelve DN teams provided patient notes for audit. External auditors completed audit forms by cross-referencing between DN office records, patient notes from home, electronic GP records and discussions with DN team leaders. A patient experience questionnaire was piloted. FINDINGS: 277 (77%) patients' records were audited. Access to records was problematic. QIs required further refinement of their wording, modification of inclusion criteria, deletion of some QIs and inclusion of others. Telephone administration of the patient experience questionnaire was not feasible for the DN patient population. CONCLUSIONS: QIs can not be used 'off the shelf' and need testing and modification before routine use. Trained, external auditors with clinical backgrounds ensure an informed, uniform, objective approach to data collection, which is desirable as QIs might inform commissioners in a competitive field in future.

Developing quality indicators for community services: the case of district nursing.

BACKGROUND: Quality indicators exist for the acute and primary care sectors in the National Health Service (NHS), but until recently little attention has been given to measuring the quality of community services. The innovative project described in this paper attempted to address that gap. OBJECTIVES: To produce a framework for developing quality indicators for Bristol Community Health services. To develop a set of initial indicators for Bristol Community Health services using the proposed framework. METHOD: After familiarising ourselves with community services and NHS policy, gathering the views of stakeholders and consulting the literature on quality indicators, we designed a framework for indicator development, using the 'test' case of the district nursing service. The long list of possible indicators came from best practice guidelines for wound, diabetes and end of life care, the three conditions most commonly treated by district nurses. To narrow down this list we surveyed and held workshops with district nurses, interviewed service users by telephone and met with commissioners and senior community health managers. RESULTS: The final set of quality indicators for district nurses included 23 organisational and clinical process and outcome indicators and eight patient experience indicators. These indicators are now being piloted, together with two potential tools identified to capture patient reported outcomes. CONCLUSION: Developing quality indicators for community services is time consuming and resource intensive. A range of skills are needed including clinical expertise, project management and skills in evidence-based medicine. The commitment and involvement of front-line professionals is crucial.

How do they measure up? Differences in stakeholder perceptions of quality measures used in English community nursing.

OBJECTIVES: To establish how quality indicators used in English community nursing are selected and applied, and their perceived usefulness to service users, commissioners and service providers. METHODS: A qualitative multi-site case study was conducted with five commissioning organizations and their service providers. Participants included commissioners, provider organization managers, nurses and service users. RESULTS: Indicator selection and application often entail complex processes influenced by wider health system and cross-organizational factors. All participants felt that current indicators, while useful for accountability and management purposes, fail to reflect the true quality of community nursing care and may sometimes indirectly compromise care. CONCLUSIONS: Valuable resources may be better used for comprehensive system redesign, to ensure that patient, carer and nurse priorities are given equivalence with those of other stakeholders.

Patient choice and evidence based decisions: The case of complementary therapies.

OBJECTIVE: Current government policies simultaneously pursue the development of 'patient-led' and 'evidence-based' approaches to healthcare. The objective of this study was to explore how primary care clinicians and Primary Care Trust (PCT) managers balance these potentially competing tensions when considering popular, controversial treatments, like complementary therapies, in consultations (clinicians) or funding decisions (PCT managers). SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: We selected two case sites where complementary therapies were offered on NHS premises in England. We interviewed 18 PCT managers and clinicians, conducted an observation of a PCT meeting on complementary therapies and collected documentary data from referral databases and service funding bids. All interviews were taped, transcribed and analysed thematically. Interview, observation and documentary data were used to compare reported beliefs and behaviour to observed and documented behaviour. RESULTS: The majority of clinicians and PCT managers claimed that research evidence guided their decisions; those who did not felt increasingly marginalized. However, discrepancies between reported and observed behaviour suggest that perceptions of research evidence, rather than fact based knowledge, predominated when considering complementary therapies. CONCLUSION: In the case of NHS complementary therapy service provision, patient preference may be largely insignificant in clinician and PCT managerial decisions, with decisions based mainly on 'evidence rhetoric' devised from collectively agreed, unchallenged, tacit perceptions of research literature. If a patient-led NHS is to become a reality, NHS professionals need to cede the power that they wield with evidence rhetoric and acknowledge the legitimacy of patient preferences, views and alternative sources of evidence.

The impact of NHS based primary care complementary therapy services on health outcomes and NHS costs: a review of service audits and evaluations.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to review evaluations and audits of primary care complementary therapy services to determine the impact of these services on improving health outcomes and reducing NHS costs. Our intention is to help service users, service providers, clinicians and NHS commissioners make informed decisions about the potential of NHS based complementary therapy services. METHODS: We searched for published and unpublished studies of NHS based primary care complementary therapy services located in England and Wales from November 2003 to April 2008. We identified the type of information included in each document and extracted comparable data on health outcomes and NHS costs (e.g. prescriptions and GP consultations). RESULTS: Twenty-one documents for 14 services met our inclusion criteria. Overall, the quality of the studies was poor, so few conclusions can be made. One controlled and eleven uncontrolled studies using SF36 or MYMOP indicated that primary care complementary therapy services had moderate to strong impact on health status scores. Data on the impact of primary care complementary therapy services on NHS costs were scarcer and inconclusive. One controlled study of a medical osteopathy service found that service users did not decrease their use of NHS resources. CONCLUSION: To improve the quality of evaluations, we urge those evaluating complementary therapy services to use standardised health outcome tools, calculate confidence intervals and collect NHS cost data from GP medical records. Further discussion is needed on ways to standardise the collection and reporting of NHS cost data in primary care complementary therapy services evaluations.

Can implementation failure or intervention failure explain the result of the 3D multimorbidity trial in general practice: mixed-methods process evaluation.

OBJECTIVES: During a cluster randomised trial, (the 3D study) of an intervention enacting recommended care for people with multimorbidity, including continuity of care and comprehensive biennial reviews, we examined implementation fidelity to interpret the trial outcome and inform future implementation decisions. DESIGN: Mixed-methods process evaluation using cross-trial data and a sample of practices, clinicians, administrators and patients. Interviews, focus groups and review observations were analysed thematically and integrated with quantitative data about implementation. Analysis was blind to trial outcomes and examined context, intervention adoption, reach and maintenance, and delivery of reviews to patients. SETTING: Thirty-three UK general practices in three areas. PARTICIPANTS: The trial included 1546 people with multimorbidity. 11 general practitioners, 14 nurses, 7 administrators and 38 patients from 9 of 16 intervention practices were sampled for an interview. RESULTS: Staff loss, practice size and different administrative strategies influenced implementation fidelity. Practices with whole administrative team involvement and good alignment between the intervention and usual care generally implemented better. Fewer reviews than intended were delivered (49% of patients receiving both intended reviews, 30% partially reviewed). In completed reviews >90% of intended components were delivered, but review observations and interviews with patients and clinicians found variation in style of component delivery, from 'tick-box' to patient-centred approaches. Implementation barriers included inadequate skills training to implement patient-centred care planning, but patients reported increased patient-centredness due to comprehensive reviews, extra time and being asked about their health concerns. CONCLUSIONS: Implementation failure contributed to lack of impact of the 3D intervention on the trial primary outcome (quality of life), but so did intervention failure since modifiable elements of intervention design were partially responsible. When a decisive distinction between implementation failure and intervention failure cannot be made, identifying potentially modifiable reasons for suboptimal implementation is important to enhance potential for impact and effectiveness of a redesigned intervention. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN06180958.

Addressing the challenges of knowledge co-production in quality improvement: learning from the implementation of the researcher-in-residence model.

The concept of knowledge co-production is used in health services research to describe partnerships (which can involve researchers, practitioners, managers, commissioners or service users) with the purpose of creating, sharing and negotiating different knowledge types used to make improvements in health services. Several knowledge co-production models have been proposed to date, some involving intermediary roles. This paper explores one such model, researchers-in-residence (also known as 'embedded researchers').In this model, researchers work inside healthcare organisations, operating as staff members while also maintaining an affiliation with academic institutions. As part of the local team, researchers negotiate the meaning and use of research-based knowledge to co-produce knowledge, which is sensitive to the local context. Even though this model is spreading and appears to have potential for using co-produced knowledge to make changes in practice, a number of challenges with its use are emerging. These include challenges experienced by the researchers in embedding themselves within the practice environment, preserving a clear focus within their host organisations and maintaining academic professional identity.In this paper, we provide an exploration of these challenges by examining three independent case studies implemented in the UK, each of which attempted to co-produce relevant research projects to improve the quality of care. We explore how these played out in practice and the strategies used by the researchers-in-residence to address them. In describing and analysing these strategies, we hope that participatory approaches to knowledge co-production can be used more effectively in the future.