Developing and Disseminating Knowledge for Ambulatory Care and Telehealth Nursing Practice

As I write my President's column, there are 15 days left in 2006. This is usually the time of year people reflect on their accomplishments and shortcomings, and make resolutions for the New Year. For those of us who are procrastinators, this may not be the most wonderful time of the year. Yes, I am a procrastinator; ask my family or the AAACN Board. I have been working on one of those short-term charters now for over 18 months! Therefore, I resolve by the end of this column to complete the deliverable for the knowledge charter.

In the last two columns, I described AAACN's work and progress on two goals: community and advocacy. The focus of this column will be Goal 1 - Knowledge. "AAACN will be the recognized source for knowledge in ambulatory care nursing." The objectives of this goal are to 1) increase the development and dissemination of ambulatory care nursing knowledge and 2) increase recognition of AAACN as a source of ambulatory care nursing information (AAACN, 2004). The first objective defined one strategy as developing a systematic process to gather and disseminate knowledge. The challenge was how to go about developing such a systematic process, and once developed, how would AAACN measure its success?

A task force, consisting of Lyn Cehring, Traci Brooks, Elizabeth Dickey, Peg Mastal, Ruth Ann Obergon, Becky Pyle, and Carol Ann Attwood, began working on this challenge at the 2005 conference. The group proposed a continuous feedback loop graphic representation. First, the group identified the following as AAACN's current sources of ambulatory care nursing knowledge (knowledge identification):

* AAACN Web site.

* AAACN Viewpoint.

* AAACN's column in Nursing Economic$.

* Special Interest Groups (SIGs).

* AAACN members.

* AAACN products.

* List serves.

* Discussion forums.

* Annual conference.

* Audio seminars.

* Board of Directors.

The group identified the second step as knowledge gathering. Through surveys, interviews, and focus groups over the last several years, AAACN has gathered knowledge about what is known about promoting ambulatory care and telehealth nursing practice. By scanning the environment, AAACN identified its knowledge assets and gaps that were then targeted for product development and for future potential knowledge sources. This step is critical and needs to be formalized so that AAACN is recognized as the source of knowledge for ambulatory care and telehealth nursing practice. Growing our inventory of knowledge assets enables AAACN to respond to our members' needs and to external knowledge needs. In addition, AAACN is able to expand its sources of knowledge. For example, AAACN is recognized as a source of knowledge and information for Magnet preparation.

The third step is knowledge evaluation (the ability to assess the big picture). Assets and gaps identified in the knowledge-gathering process need to be to critiqued and judged for importance and value (for example, what should be acted upon immediately versus what is a shortterm project and what is a long-term project). The ability to respond quickly to member and practice needs, as well as to allocate necessary resources to product development, are critical aspects of this step.

Knowledge dissemination is the final step in the process. To increase recognition of AAACN as a source of ambulatory care nursing information, the process must support information utilization and dissemination to ensure that knowledge-generated sources are available and can be fully used by members, non-members, employers, and policymakers to improve service delivery in ambulatory care and telehealth nursing practice.

This systematic process is based on four steps: knowledge identification, knowledge gathering, knowledge evaluation, and knowledge dissemination. The process is depicted by a continuous feedback loop of identifying gaps in ambulatory care and telehealth nursing practice knowledge, gathering data and information about the identified area of need, evaluating the data and information related to the area of need, planning the knowledge resource, and method of knowledge delivery and dissemination. Now that the process is developed, how will AAACN go about measuring its success in terms of dissemination? One method is to track each source of knowledge and its utilization. For example:

* AAACN Web Site Activity Report compares visits over time, how many members are logging in and how many non-members are visiting the site, how many pages visitors are viewing during one visit, and the most popular pages. We know that our Web site traffic has increased over the last year.

* The Nursing Economid "Perspectives in Ambulatory Care" column utilization can be tracked not only by journal subscriptions, but also by how many times the articles are cited in other papers and how many times the articles are requested and/or downloaded. In the last 6 months, some of the articles have been downloaded more than 75 times, and the articles are cited frequently in other papers.