‘It depends’: what 86 systematic reviews tell us about what strategies to use to support the use of research in clinical practice

The gap between research findings and clinical practice is well documented and a range of strategies have been developed to support the implementation of research into clinical practice. The objective of this study was to update and extend two previous reviews of systematic reviews of strategies designed to implement research evidence into clinical practice.

We developed a comprehensive systematic literature search strategy based on the terms used in the previous reviews to identify studies that looked explicitly at interventions designed to turn research evidence into practice. We identified 32 reviews conducted between 2010 and 2022. The majority of reviews report strategies achieving small impacts (normally on processes of care). There is much less evidence that these strategies have shifted patient outcomes.

Combined with the two previous reviews, 86 systematic reviews of strategies to increase the implementation of research into clinical practice have been identified. 

Key messages:

• Considerable time and money is invested in implementing and evaluating strategies to increase the implementation of research into clinical practice.
• The growing body of evidence is not providing the anticipated clear lessons to support improved implementation.
• Instead what is needed is better understanding and building more situated, relational and organisational capability to support the use of research in clinical practice.
• This would involve a more central role in implementation science for a wider range of perspectives, especially from the social, economic, political and behavioural sciences and for greater use of different types of synthesis, such as realist synthesis.

This paper by Annette Boaz, Juan Baeza, Alec Fraser, and Erik Persson is published online by Implementation Science, volume 19, Feb 2024.