uOttawa News

OTTAWA, December 18, 2012  —  The University of Ottawa and the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) are proud to announce the launch of the new Nursing Best Practice Research Centre (NBPRC). The new research centre will promote research, foster collaboration and facilitate knowledge transfer related to best nursing practices among researchers and practitioners, policymakers, educators, administrators and other research and social groups in Canada and around the world.

In January 2006, the University of Ottawa and RNAO co-founded the Nursing Best Practice Research Unit with funding from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to deliver state-of-the-art nursing knowledge based on the best available evidence.

“With six years of nursing research excellence that has resulted in new policies and procedures, documentation tools and materials to educate nurses and patients, the unit certainly earned its promotion to a fully fledged research centre,” says Barbara Davies, co-director of the new centre and full professor at the School of Nursing. The research centre will play an important role in documenting the impact of the implementation of 50 RNAO evidence-based guidelines on improving patient care patient outcomes. “The guidelines include better pain management, enhanced smoking cessation practices, preventing falls and many other clinical and healthy work environment practices,”says Irmajean Bajnok, who co-directs the Centre together with Davies.

RNAO’s chief executive officer, Doris Grinspun, and Sylvie Lauzon, interim dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, expressed great pride in the success of the partnership. For the past 13 years, RNAO and the University of Ottawa have collaborated intensely on evaluating the impact and sustainability of RNAO clinical and healthy work environment best practice guidelines. Models for knowledge translation, decision-support for patients, leadership and access to care by vulnerable populations are being studied.  

The new centre’s co-director, Barbara Davies, and associate director, Kathryn Higuchi, are both professors in the Faculty of Health Sciences’ School of Nursing and will work with their colleagues to create a better research environment for graduate students and inter-professional faculty members as well as to stimulate research development and use research results in health-care settings to improve patient care and outcomes. They will also continue to engage nurses and other health-care professionals in all sectors from Ontario, Canada and around the globe.

Evaluation methods will be designed to monitor changes and to measure the impact of best practices on patient outcomes in order to help ensure best practices are adopted over the long term. If the research unit’s track record is anything to go on, success will be the outcome. In 2010-2011, members of the unit were involved in more than 170 research studies resulting in 234 publications. There are more than 70 individual members from 12 Canadian and international universities. In addition, at least 24 organization members will help integrate the new research results into health-care settings.

About the School of Nursing at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Health Sciences
Founded in 1933 as the first professional school at the University of Ottawa, the School of Nursing prepares nurses at the bachelor’s, master’s and PhD levels. The School’s professors are at the forefront of nursing research in Canada and receive major funding from federal and provincial governments, foundations and donors.

About the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO)
Founded in 1925, RNAO is the professional association representing registered nurses practising in Ontario. Since 1925, RNAO has lobbied for healthy public policy, promoted excellence in nursing practice, increased nurses’ contributions to shaping the health-care system and influenced decisions that affect nurses and the public they serve.


INFORMATION:

Néomie Duval
Media Relations Officer
University of Ottawa
Office: 613-562-5800 x2981
Cell.: 613-863-7221
neomie.duval@uOttawa.ca