BackgroundPediatric Early Warning Systems (PEWS) assist early detection of clinical deterioration in hospitalized children with cancer. Relevant to successful PEWS implementation, the “stages of change” model characterizes stakeholder support for PEWS based on willingness and effort to adopt the new practice.MethodsAt five resource‐limited pediatric oncology centers in Latin America, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 71 hospital staff involved in PEWS implementation. Purposive sampling was used to select centers requiring variable time to complete PEWS implementation, with low‐barrier centers (3–4 months) and high‐barrier centers (10–11 months). Interviews were conducted in Spanish, professionally transcribed, and translated into English. Thematic content analysis explored “stage of change” with constant comparative analysis across stakeholder types and study sites.ResultsParticipants identified six interventions (training, incentives, participation, evidence, persuasion, and modeling) and two policies (environmental planning and mandates) as effective strategies used by implementation leaders to promote stakeholder progression through stages of change. Key approaches involved presentation of evidence demonstrating PEWS effectiveness, persuasion and incentives addressing specific stakeholder interests, enthusiastic individuals serving as models for others, and policies enforced by hospital directors facilitating habitual PEWS use. Effective engagement targeted hospital directors during early implementation phases to provide programmatic legitimacy for clinical staff.ConclusionThis study identifies strategies to promote adoption and maintained use of PEWS, highlighting the importance of tailoring implementation strategies to the motivations of each stakeholder type. These findings can guide efforts to implement PEWS and other evidence‐based practices that improve childhood cancer outcomes in resource‐limited hospitals.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.