Closing the Loop: A Dissemination Plan for a Triage Nausea Pilot and What the Evidence-Based Practice Process Taught Along the Way
Student Name
RN to BSN Program, Aspen University
N494: Essentials of Nursing Research
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Closing the Loop: A Dissemination Plan for a Triage Nausea Pilot and What the Evidence-Based Practice Process Taught Along the Way
Evidence-based practice is often described as a cycle that begins with a question and ends when the results of a practice change are shared so that others can use them (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2023). Across this course, a question about nausea in an emergency department fast-track area moved through a literature search, appraisals of quantitative, qualitative, and systematic review evidence, a synthesis and recommendation, and an ethical review of the resulting pilot. This paper completes the cycle with a plan for disseminating the pilot's results inside and outside the organization, and it closes with a reflection on how each step met the course's objectives.
What Will Be Disseminated
The three-month pilot will produce a small set of findings: the percentage of eligible patients offered the isopropyl alcohol pad, the change in nausea scores at 10 and 30 minutes, the time from arrival to the first nausea intervention, the use of rescue antiemetics, the number of intravenous lines placed only for antiemetics, and patient satisfaction. Whatever the results, they are worth sharing. A positive result supports continuing the protocol; a null or negative result prevents other units from adopting a popular practice that did not work locally. Both outcomes add to what nurses know.
Internal Dissemination
Effective dissemination matches the message, the messenger, the audience, and the channel (Brownson et al., 2018). Inside the organization, the first audience is the emergency department staff who carried out the pilot. They will receive a one-page summary with two charts, nausea scores over time and time to first intervention, presented at a staff meeting by the triage nurses who led the pilot, because peers are more persuasive messengers than managers. The second audience is the nursing practice committee and the medical director, who will decide whether the protocol becomes permanent; they need the full data, the limitations, and a recommendation.
The third audience is the rest of the hospital. A poster at the organization's annual nursing research and evidence-based practice day, and a short article in the nursing newsletter, would let staff from urgent care, oncology infusion, and postoperative units consider whether a similar protocol could help their patients. The Cochrane review of postoperative aromatherapy suggests that the postoperative setting is a natural candidate (Hines et al., 2018).
External Dissemination
Sharing results beyond the hospital requires more care. Because the pilot was approved as quality improvement, the team would consult the institutional review board before submitting results for publication, as discussed in Module 7. If approved, the team would write the report following the SQUIRE 2.0 guidelines, which were developed to improve the reporting of health care improvement work and ask authors to describe the local problem, the intervention, how it was studied, the results, and what was learned about context (Ogrinc et al., 2016). An emergency nursing journal or a regional emergency nursing conference would be appropriate venues. A presentation at a state emergency nurses' association meeting could reach the triage nurses most likely to use the findings.
Dissemination is also a responsibility to the patients who took part: their experience should improve care for others, not end in a spreadsheet. The team will therefore share a plain-language summary with the hospital's patient and family advisory council.
Knowing Whether Dissemination Worked
Dissemination has outcomes of its own, and Brownson et al. (2018) describe upstream and midstream indicators such as changes in awareness and greater use of evidence-based interventions. For this plan, simple indicators are enough. Inside the hospital, the team will track how many units request the protocol or the teaching card within six months, whether the nursing practice committee adopts the protocol as standard, and whether triage nurses who were not part of the pilot use it, visible in the documentation field for the intervention. Outside the hospital, the indicators are acceptance of the conference abstract or manuscript and inquiries from other emergency departments. If no one outside the pilot team asks about the protocol after the poster and newsletter, the message or the channel needs to change, not just the volume.
Reflection on the Course Objectives
The course asked students to understand the steps of the research process, to use the methods and tools needed to evaluate research critically, and to apply research to current practice. The first objective was met by carrying one question through every step: forming a PICOT question, searching three databases, and classifying what was found by level of evidence. The second was met through three different appraisals. Appraising a randomized trial taught me to ask how a design feature, such as a scented intervention, could bias a subjective outcome. Appraising a qualitative study taught me to judge credibility and transferability rather than sample size, and appraising a meta-analysis taught me to separate confidence in a review's methods from confidence in its answer (Lee & Tamale, 2023).
The third objective was met in the synthesis, the ethical review, and this dissemination plan, which turned a question from triage into a practice that can be tested and shared. The most important lesson was that evidence-based practice is not a search for a single perfect study. It is a disciplined way of combining several imperfect ones with clinical expertise and patient preferences, and then checking the result in one's own setting. If I began this course again, I would spend more time on the search strategy, because every later step depended on having found the right studies, and I would involve a triage colleague from the first week, since the clinical expertise that shaped the recommendation came from conversations that could have started much earlier.
Conclusion
Dissemination completes the evidence-based practice cycle. The triage nausea pilot will be shared internally with the staff who ran it, the committee that decides its future, and other units that might adapt it, and externally, after institutional review board consultation, through a SQUIRE-guided report and professional presentations. Whatever the results, sharing them honestly is what turns one department's effort into knowledge that other nurses can use.
References
Brownson, R. C., Eyler, A. A., Harris, J. K., Moore, J. B., & Tabak, R. G. (2018). Getting the word out: New approaches for disseminating public health science. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 24(2), 102-111. https://doi.org/10.1097/PHH.0000000000000673
Hines, S., Steels, E., Chang, A., & Gibbons, K. (2018). Aromatherapy for treatment of postoperative nausea and vomiting. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (3), Article CD007598. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD007598.pub3
Lee, S. Y., & Tamale, J. R. (2023). Isopropyl alcohol inhalation for the treatment of nausea in adult emergency department patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Emergency Medicine Journal, 40(9), 660-665. https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2022-212871
Melnyk, B. M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2023). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practice (5th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.
Ogrinc, G., Davies, L., Goodman, D., Batalden, P., Davidoff, F., & Stevens, D. (2016). SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence): Revised publication guidelines from a detailed consensus process. BMJ Quality & Safety, 25(12), 986-992. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2015-004411
How this N 494 Module 8 example is structured
The last module of N494 typically asks students to reflect on how they met the course objectives, and it is the natural place to close the evidence-based practice cycle with dissemination. Aspen does not publish module deliverables, so check your classroom for the exact prompt. This example defines what will be shared, plans internal and external dissemination by audience using a named framework and the SQUIRE 2.0 guideline, and closes with a reflection organized by the course objectives.
N494 Module 8 questions, answered
What does N494 Module 8 usually ask for?
The final module commonly asks students to reflect on their learning and describe how they met each course objective, often alongside the last step of the evidence-based practice process: sharing or applying findings. Aspen does not publish module deliverables, so your classroom's instructions govern.
What should a dissemination plan include?
What will be shared, to which audiences, by which messengers, in which formats and channels, and how you will know it reached them. The sample plans for staff, decision makers, other units, journals, conferences and patients, and cites a dissemination framework and a reporting guideline.
How do I write a strong course reflection?
Take each course objective in turn and name a specific skill or insight from a specific assignment that shows you met it. General statements such as 'I learned a lot about research' earn little credit; the sample ties each objective to an appraisal it completed.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Aspen University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.