Patient Safety: Implementation Science: What It Is and Why It Is Crucial for Health Care

Presentation Description / Summary: Getting your hospital to make a change is not only hard work, it's a science! Implementation science seeks to understand factors that determine why an evidence-based intervention may or may not be adopted within specific healthcare or public health settings. This information is then used to develop and test strategies to improve the speed, quantity and quality of innovation or change uptake. In this discussion, we will cover the basics of implementation science, implementation models such as the TRIP model, and change sustainability. We will discuss the challenges specifically faced in implementating change in veterinary medicine with an emphasis on patient safety initiatives. Attendees will practice identifying key stakeholders, fascilitators, and distractors of change implementation, as well as brainstorm strategies for uptake of a change or evidence-based innovation within a hospital setting.