Knowledge Management and Advanced Practice Nursing

Knowledge Management and Advanced Practice Nursing Knowledge management is an important aspect of the development of service delivery and the enhancement of the quality of care offered to patients by a nurse. Knowledge management is imperative as it facilitates the process of translation of knowledge into the practice in an attempt to raise the value of the practice, as well as car offered to clients. In relatively general terms, knowledge management refers to a paradigm concerned with the concerted, measured, and synchronized efforts to manage the knowledge within an organization. Such management is via practices that identify the knowledge and leverage that knowledge to the improvement of the nursing practice and care to patients. Knowledge management improves the innovativeness of the nursing practice and the responsiveness to individual needs of various patients in the best possible way possible. Among the primary aims of the processes of knowledge management, is to advance a knowledge intensive culture among nursing professionals by encouraging aggregated behaviors such as proactive seeking of knowledge and knowledge sharing. In turn, nursing professionals can easily translate the knowledge into practice by tapping into it to improve the quality of care offered to particular individuals and to improve the nursing practice overall. Such sort of translation of knowledge into practice is superior because it allows for immediate evaluation of knowledge and consequent use of relevant knowledge to tailor care to the client. Knowledge management has various components, which from an advanced practice perspective, are readily distinguishable. Nevertheless, the major components are condensable into four main components of knowledge management. One of the major components of knowledge management is knowledge creation. It involves the identifying a portfolio of content and selecting the relevant content from such a portfolio. Subsequently, knowledge creation also involves the capturing such relevant knowledge and then analyzing it to discover any new knowledge. Another component of knowledge management is the codification of knowledge. Knowledge codification implies the mapping of the network of knowledge, storing the knowledge correctly and organizing such knowledge in a manner that creates easily retrievable repositories. The codification of knowledge is the component that aims at making knowledge easily retrievable. Another component is the transfer of knowledge. It involves mobilizing knowledge, distributing that knowledge and other pull and push activities that make knowledge available to those who need it. Knowledge transfer is a critical component as it allows for the availability of information as and when need arises. Efficient transfer of knowledge can make the difference in improving the nursing practice and in the quality of care offered to the clients. The fourth major component of knowledge management is knowledge application. Knowledge application involves the retrieval of relevant knowledge and analyzing the applicability of the knowledge to the particular situation. In addition, knowledge application implies the collaboration among nursing professionals and interpreting the various forms of specific sets of knowledge. Further nursing professionals may develop ways to support decisions and to develop knowledge maps. Knowledge application is also a vital component of knowledge management as only efficient application of knowledge ensures practice improvement. Proper translation of knowledge into practice is the core concept of the knowledge management process and activities. The whole concept of knowledge management is only relevant if the nursing professionals can efficiently translate the available information to nursing practice and thereby improve the quality of care offered to their clients. Failure to translate knowledge into practice can easily lead to low quality of care, as well as burgeoning costs. It is why proper inter-professional collaboration, decision support, and development of knowledge maps are crucial to the process of translation of knowledge into practice. Translation Science and Advanced Practice Nursing Translation science is currently among the most captivating dynamic in the preservation of the theories, research, and evidence-based practice cycle. It involves the synthesis of knowledge, dissemination of that knowledge and the application of that knowledge to the improvement of nursing practice as well as the quality of care o the clients. Efficient translation of knowledge is essential to the knowledge management process (Groeneboer & Whitney, 2012). As discussed earlier the efficiency of the whole process of knowledge management depends on the adequate translation of the knowledge into practice. It is because efficient translation improves the nursing practice, as well as the care provided to the clients. One of the primary advantages of the proper interpretation of knowledge is that it unites the theory, research, and practice into an inseparable aspect of the nursing profession (Burgio, 2010). Translation enables the nurse to apply evidence-based research into practice. Translation science involves various components, which together make up the whole process of translation of knowledge into practice. Among the major components of translation science, is setting the priority of research (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2004). Setting the priority involves the proper planning for the type of evidence-based research to pursue based on the frequent needs of the nursing profession during practice. A nurse may prioritize certain types of evidence-based studies based on the requirements of his or her clients. As such, it remains possible to access relevant information to translate into practice when the needs arise. Similarly, another crucial component is the knowledge priority setting. Setting the priority of knowledge relates to the process of highlighting the most important information that the nurse needs and having that information easily available for retrieval. Another core component of translational science is the synthesis if knowledge. Efficient translation of knowledge into practice depends upon the practical synthesis of knowledge. The nurse needs to comprehend the available information efficiently, link it to the problem at hand and if the information is relevant, then he can translate that information or knowledge into practice. Proper synthesis of knowledge is the key to improvement of the nursing practice, as well as quality of care to the patient. The other core component of translation science is the actual application of the knowledge to the particular case of the patient (Mateo & Foreman, 2014). Knowledge distribution and implementation involves the linking of the synthesized information to the particular case of a client and applying the concepts of that information to the benefit of the client. It is only through proper application of relevant knowledge that the process of knowledge translation comes alive. The last component of the translational science is the evaluation of the outcomes relating to the translation process. The nurse must observe the results of the translation determine the level of the effectiveness of such knowledge translation. If the translation improves the care provided to the client, then one can deem that process successful. However, the opposite can also take place whereby the translation of knowledge fails to achieve an improvement in the practice of nursing. Nevertheless, it is not likely since the knowledge translation utilizes evidence-based research. Creating a Translation Science Culture in Advanced Practice Nursing Creating a culture where nurses can translate knowledge into practice is an excellent way to enhance the practice and improve care to the clients. It is especially so if the translation of knowledge remains based on a relationship centred practice where the nurse tailors care to the individual preferences of the patient (Griffiths, Borkan, Byrne, et al., 2010). Nurses can easily relate the evidence-based findings to their practice and consequently evaluate the translation process to determine the effectiveness. Based on such evaluation of the translation process, the nurse will realize that there are various barriers as well as potential benefits observed in the translation of knowledge in the practice of nursing. Such barriers and potential benefits served to redefine the advanced practice environment as the nurses find ways to overcome the barriers or to take advantage of the opportunities. Among the possible advantages of a culture of translational science is the ability to improve the practice and the value of care afforded to a client (Roy & Jones, 2007). The advantage of improved practice is that it helps to save costs and the client gains by receiving better quality care from the nurse. It is because the nurse will tailor the type of care offered to the needs of the particular client. In this way, there is an opportunity to recovering faster or in a better form because of improved care. Another important potential benefit of translation is that it allows the nurse to learn on the job by applying the knowledge to the practice and at the same time observing the outcomes. It forms a powerful way of learning because the learning and the outcomes of the learning are instant and, therefore, the knowledge is likely to remain imprinted on the mind of the nurse. Consequently, the nurse becomes more skilled as a result and can offer better service to more clients. Another related potential benefit is that the translation process related the theories, research and evidenced based knowledge to a particular situation. In turn, together they create a type of wisdom is only attainable through such translational science. However, they are also potential barriers that affect the translation science in practice. Such barriers include the inability to access relevant knowledge to translation to practice in a particular situation. If knowledge required is not available then there is the chance that the translation process may not take place. Consequently, it reduces the opportunities to improve the practice or the quality of care offered to a client. Another barrier is the inability to merge the preferences of the client to the knowledge available. Some clients might be difficult, and their preferences might be different from the available knowledge that the nurse may want to use to improve the quality of care for the client. It poses a barrier because it limits the nurse's ability to translate knowledge into practice. Similarly, another barrier may be time limitations. It is where there might not be enough time to apply the knowledge available to the care of the patient. It is a barrier because it may render the knowledge irrelevant if not implemented in time. In addition, lack of management support in the process of knowledge translation may pose a barrier to the improvement of care through knowledge translation. If the management fails to offers relevant support, it may cause an inability to improve care through knowledge translation. References Burgio, L. (2010). Disentangling the translational sciences: A social science perspective. Research & Theory for Nursing Practice, 24(1), 56-63. Canadian Institutes of Health Research. (2004). Innovation in action: Knowledge translation strategy. Ottawa, Ont.: Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Griffiths, F., Borkan, J., Byrne, D., Crabtree, B., Dowrick, C., Gunn, J., Kokanovic, R., ... Sturt, J. (January 01, 2010). Developing Evidence for How to Tailor Medical Interventions for the Individual Patient. Qualitative Health Research, 20, 12, 1629-1641. Groeneboer, C., & Whitney, M. (January 01, 2012). An Overview of Knowledge Translation. Mateo, M. A., & In Foreman, M. D. (2014). Research for advanced practice nurses: From evidence to practice. New York: Springer Pub. Roy, C., & Jones, D. A. (2007). Nursing knowledge development and clinical practice. New York: Springer Pub. Co.