Barriers to implementing research in clinical practice

Barriers to implementing research in clinical nursing practice have long been a concern, both to the nursing profession and to managers involved in the delivery of optimal, evidence-based and cost-effective patient care. In this article, American, Australian and Canadian studies of nurses' perceptions of these barriers are reviewed. The author then presents the findings of her study of perceptions of the barriers to research implementation in a sample of 25 nursing professionals in Ontario. The study used the Barriers to Research Utilization Scale, a research instrument that was also employed in earlier studies of this theme in the United States and Australia. Participants rated setting characteristics as the most important barrier to research utilization. They rated nurse characteristics as relatively less important, although the results did raise a question about nurses' possible externalization or abdication of responsibility. The author makes a number of recommendations to address these perceived barriers.