Sustaining knowledge use

Institutionalization of evidence-informed practices in healthcare settings

“…Among KT researchers, the sustainability of evidence-informed practices, that refers to their continuous use in organizations after their adoption and implementation has been completed, has been emphasized as an ideal outcome of KT strategies [20]. We, however, argue that although sustainability is related to maintaining new practices in organizations, it does not represent the same level of constancy and pervasiveness as their institutionalization.…”

“…Even though some organizational practices can be sustained in organizations without being institutionalized, for example practices supported by ‘soft’ (temporary) money provided to organizations or by other forms of temporary supports, it is when new practices become highly institutionalized that their integration into daily activities and routines maintains their impact on organizational functioning without the need for additional external interventions [21]. Thus, institutionalization has been defined as “staying power’ or endurance of change that becomes part of everyday activities or normal practices in an organization’ [[20]:167].…”

Mobilising knowledge to improve UK health care: learning from other countries and other sectors – a multimethod mapping study

“…16,32 The growth of implementation science as a discipline has called attention to the need for more robust evidence on all of the stages of implementation and on the ways in which organisational change is effected, 33,34 including sustainability and scale-up. 35 At the same time there has been recognition of the need for focused knowledge mobilisation rather than pursuing the 'knowledge translation imperative' in a more scattergun manner. 36 There have also been calls for careful prior consideration of existing 'naturalistic' knowledge exchange processes within an organisation prior to planning and implementing formal knowledge exchange interventions.…”

“…For these agencies, but also for others, a main focus in knowledge mobilisation was enacting a knowledge brokering function and supporting interactive exchanges around research. The term 'knowledge broker' was not always used explicitly within organisations: 'that is not a term that's generally used in this organisation, but I think that is a large part of our function' (35).…”

“…Indeed, the 'complex adaptive systems' perspective 20,27,78 emphasises how the different levels of the system affect each other: interventions at one level are affected by, and affect, factors at other system levels. 35 There are differing views about the extent to which and how contextual factors can be managed or even influenced. Many authors (e.g.…”