Objective: The purpose of the study was to investigate the perceptions of administrators and clinicians regarding a public health facilitated collaborative supporting the translation into practice of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (ICSI) Adult Obesity Guideline.
Design and sample: This qualitative study was conducted with 10 health care organizations participating in a voluntary, interprofessional obesity management collaborative. A purposive sample of 39 participants included two to three clinicians and an administrator from each organization. Interview analysis focused on how the intervention affected participants and their practices.
Results: Four themes described participant experiences of obesity guideline translation: (1) a shift from powerlessness to positive motivation, (2) heightened awareness coupled with improved capacity to respond, (3) personal ownership and use of creativity, and (4) a sense of the importance of increased interprofessional collaboration.
Conclusions: The investigation of interprofessional perspectives illuminates the feelings and perceptions of clinician and administrator participants regarding obesity practice guideline translation. These themes suggest that positive motivation, improved capacity, personal creative ownership, and interprofessional collaboration may be conducive to successful evidence-based obesity guideline implementation. Further research is needed to evaluate these findings relative to translating the ICSI obesity guideline and other guidelines into practice in diverse clinical settings.
Keywords: collaboration; health care delivery; obesity; primary care; public health nursing practice; rural health; underserved populations.
© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.