What strategies could be used in the (hospital/medical) workplace to increase the use of research findings?

Hospital: formularies and standard protocols. Docs (especially old-school ones) do NOT like this at all because they think it's taking away their ability to practice medicine. But when used as a strong suggestion or guideline, formularies and standard protocols can be helpful. Most hospitals have standard protocols for at least some procedures/events (hip replacement surgery, MI with Integrilin, diabetic ketoacidosis are just 3 I can think of at the hospital I was at.)

What strategies could be used in the (hospital/medical) workplace to increase the use of research findings?
The "journal club" approach described above does work from time to time. You've just got to get the docs who have time. This approach is really only going to work in an academic medical center where the docs might be also interested in teaching (medical students, residents, etc.), otherwise, they are trying to get in and out of the hospital as fast as possible.





Another approach really depends on the strengh of the med exec committee. I worked with a doc once who got reprimanded because supposedly put a patient's life in danger (the patient was fine) because he used a medication for an indication for which there was no literature (I found a case report or two). He was peeved! It did make him think about doing a lit search before doing the whole "let's see if this will work" approach, which is risky to say the least. This patient was not in any imminent danger from what he was trying to treat by the way. The only caveat is that most hospitals are not trying to scare their doctors away since often the doctors bring the patients who bring the money. This approach would have worked at the place where I used to work except that they selectively enforced these policies. As a county hospital who was at one point 10 million in the hole, you could say they can't afford to lose docs. The hospitals have a hard enough time keeping doctors from writing dangerous abbreviations in medical charts which could cause them to lose their funding should JCAHO catch them not enforcing these policies.
Reply:One hospital that I was honored to visit had a fun organization that provided free nursing and medical journal copies to the staff to take home to peruse. Then once every 6 weeks they hosted a luncheon where they discussed journal articles. It was an innovative idea that I would be interested in if I were to join that facility in the future.