DNP 820 Topic 3 DQ 2: the research-to-practice lag
The second half is the one worth writing: an honest account of what stops you personally from practising fully evidence-based, which is rarely ignorance and usually structure.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 15, 2026
The lag is structural, and your barriers are local
The seventeen-year figure is widely quoted and worth handling carefully, since it came from a specific analysis and has become a slogan. What it points at is real, and the reasons are structural rather than personal. Publication takes years and negative results often never appear at all. Findings must accumulate before a body of evidence exists rather than a single study. Guidelines are revised on cycles, so a finding waits for the next revision. Adoption then requires system change — training, protocol rewrites, purchasing, sometimes a change to the electronic record — and each of those has its own queue. Incentives may point the other way, and the evidence may not fit your population, which is a legitimate reason for delay rather than a failure of will. None of that is clinician resistance, which is the explanation the question is quietly inviting you to reject.
The second half asks for a local audit and it deserves candour, because the honest barriers are structural too. Access is one: if you cannot read a paywalled article at work, you are not going to appraise it between patients. Time is the largest single one, and it is not a personal failing when a shift leaves no protected minutes for reading. Protocols may lag behind evidence and deviating from them carries individual risk. The electronic record may make the evidence-based option slower than the default. Colleagues and hierarchy matter, since practice is a group behaviour. And the evidence itself may be genuinely absent for the specific decision in front of you, which is worth naming because it undercuts the idea that a hundred per cent evidence base was ever available. Name two or three concretely, and if you can say what would remove one of them, the post has done more than complain.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Explain the translation lag structurally rather than as individual failure.
- 02Distinguish the stages at which delay accumulates.
- 03Audit your own setting candidly for barriers.
- 04Recognise where evidence genuinely does not exist.
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Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
Important information for writing discussion questions and participation Hi Class, Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts. Contact me if you have any questions. Important information on Writing a Discussion Question Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references) There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article. Include in-text citations in your response Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information Follow APA-7th edition Points will be deducted if the above is not followed Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week. Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references) Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count. Follow APA 7th edition Points will be deducted if the above is not followed Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points. Here are some helpful links Student paper example Citing Sources The Writing Center is a great resource Welcome to class DNP 820 Topic 3 DQ 2 Discuss your thoughts on the reasons why Research can take between 10-20 years to be translated into practice Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to. I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. 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Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week. I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Reasons for the lag, spread across the stages of translation.
- 02Two or three specific barriers in your own practice.
- 03An honest account of which are structural and which are within your control.
- 04At least one barrier with a proposed remedy.
System reasons, then your own setting
Why the lag exists
Set out delay at publication, accumulation, guideline revision and adoption.
Adoption as system change
Explain what an organisation has to alter before a finding reaches a patient.
Your own barriers
Audit access, time, protocol, record design and hierarchy in your setting.
What would change one
Propose a remedy for at least one barrier you named.
Where the lag has actually been measured
Recommended databases
- Implementation Science
- AHRQ
- PubMed Central
- Your organisation's policy library
Search sequence
- 1.Find the source of the translation lag figure before quoting it.
- 2.Search implementation barriers AND nursing for the categories the literature uses.
- 3.Check when your own unit's key protocol was last revised.
- 4.Identify one evidence-based practice you know your setting does not follow, and why.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Making sense of implementation theories, models and frameworks
Implementation Science (BMC), Per Nilsen · 2015
How implementation is theorised, which is what turns a list of barriers into an analysis.
- 02
Nursing managers' perspectives on facilitators of and barriers to evidence-based practice: A cross-sectional study
Nursing Open (Wiley), via PubMed Central · 2023
Managers' perspectives on facilitators and barriers to evidence-based practice, the empirical version of your local audit.
- 03
Effects of Work Engagement and Barriers on Evidence-Based Practice Implementation for Clinical Nurses: A Cross-Sectional Study
Healthcare (MDPI), via PubMed Central · 2024
Work engagement and barriers to EBP implementation among clinical nurses, which grounds the time-pressure argument in data.
- 04
PARIHS revisited: from heuristic to integrated framework for the successful implementation of knowledge into practice
Implementation Science (BMC), Gill Harvey and Alison Kitson · 2016
An implementation framework treating context and facilitation as determinants, which is where a remedy comes from.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Attributing the lag to clinician resistance alone.
- Quoting the seventeen-year figure without noting where it came from.
- Listing barriers that could apply to any workplace.
- Treating time pressure as a personal failing.
- Assuming a hundred per cent evidence base is achievable in principle.
Submission checklist
- Do your reasons cover more than one stage of translation?
- Are your own barriers specific to your setting?
- Have you distinguished structural from personal barriers?
- Is there at least one proposed remedy?
- Have you acknowledged where evidence simply does not exist?
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.

Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.

Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.