Challenges exist when translating research findings into clinical practice
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Health care professionals find it challenging to interpret and translate research findings into clinical practice, specifically findings about autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease.
“The translation of clinical research to practice has been the subject of intense scrutiny in the efforts to identify ways to improve the uptake of findings that can enhance patient care,” Dana Ravyn, PhD, MPH, from CMEology in Connecticut, and colleagues wrote. They added, “To gain insight into the facilitators and barriers to translation of research into practice as specifically related to [autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease] ADPKD, we conducted a qualitative study of health care providers practicing nephrology.”
Researchers asked participants who completed an online CME learning activity, Strategies to Improve Management of Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease: Navigating Pitfalls and Overcoming Challenge, to participate in an interview. A total of 1,926 health care professionals completed the CME activity during the 12-month period it was available, and 13 nephrology providers agreed to participate in the interview.
Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews focused on the experiences, opinions, feelings and knowledge of interviewees when it came to the translation of clinical results to patient care. The interview transcripts were coded and excerpted, and researchers identified themes using Dedoose software. Researchers used inductive thematic analyses to analyze the overall data.
The textual interpretations of the interviews revealed that barriers to research translation are prevalent among health care providers managing patients with ADPKD and these clinicians face additional challenges. Challenges include the burden of interpreting the clinical research without official guidelines.
While the pool of participants was small, the interviews still reached saturation.
“Overall, this thematic analysis helps identify potential educational and noneducational interventions to enhance promoters and mitigate barriers to research translation,” Ravyn and colleagues wrote. “This study found that the same factors can be either promoters or impediments to translation and that understanding the specific considerations that influence this difference in effect — herein referred to as the tipping point — may help in formulating strategies to improve translation in the nephrology setting.”
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