Effects of an Action Support Component in Audit and Feedback Interventions With Primary Care Nursing Teams: A Pragmatic Trial

Audit and feedback (A&F) is an intervention that aims to improve professionals practices by providing professionals with a summary of their performance over a period of time. A&F has 1) an audit phase, in which performance indicators are measured and 2) a feedback phase, in which the indicators are reported to the professionals to encourage reflexive practice and determine an action plan. Although its effectiveness has been demonstrated, it is widely accepted that this type of intervention is highly variable and that its design has considerable room for improvement. A major limitation to the effectiveness of A&F is a persistent intention-action gap encounters by professionals following the feedback. This gap prevents the translation of planned actions into concrete changes in practice. In nursing, an aspect that contributes to this gap is a lack of coordination of actions within nursing teams, which limits their capacity for collective action.

Purpose and objectives: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of an A&F intervention enhanced with an action support component on the primary care nursing teams' capacity to improve performance compared to a standard A&F intervention. This study has two specific objectives: 1) to measure the effects of the addition of structured focus groups during an enhanced A&F intervention on the performance levels of the process and outcome indicators compared with the measured effects of standard A&F intervention; and 2) to analyze the effects of the implementation fidelity of the standard and enhanced A&F interventions on the effectiveness of A&F.

Method: A pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial with analysis of implementation fidelity will be conducted. Eight primary care nursing organizations will be included. Four of them will receive a standard A&F intervention, while the remaining four will receive an AF intervention with a support component. Performance will be measured using clinical administrative data from an electronic database currently used to compile statistics on the services provided and the users of Local community service centers (CLSC) in Quebec. Performance will be measured from wound care episodes of patients who had a follow-up during the study period. Four process indicators (continuity, planning and adjusting of the treatment plan, initial assessment and education) and three outcome indicators (frequency and number of consultations and duration of episodes) sensitive to nursing care will be measured 3 times: at the beginning of the study (T1), after 6 months (T2) and after 12 months (T3). The feedback meetings will take place between times 1 and 2, then between times 2 and 3. The intervention group will receive the support component in the form of structured focus groups in addition to the feedback meetings, twice between each of the time periods. Models of generalized estimating equations will be adjusted to analyze differences in performance in each group. An analysis of implementation fidelity will be conducted in parallel of the pragmatic trial using grids of observations in each of the settings