DNP 820 Week 5: implementation into practice
Five sections are named and the fifth is the one most papers drop: what the AHRQ site itself offers to help close the gap you have just described.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 15, 2026
A named gap, not a general lament about translation
Start from the site rather than from a practice you already have in mind, because the assignment specifies the source and because browsing it will show you which practices have documented uptake data — and without that data the second section has nothing to say. Choose a practice where the evidence is settled and adoption is not: that combination is what makes a gap describable. Then the second section, assessing the extent of implementation, is the one that separates a researched paper from an asserted one. Look for actual figures — adoption rates, variation between regions or hospital types, time since the evidence was published — because a paper that says implementation has been slow without a number is describing an impression. A number from a national survey or a registry is worth more here than three paragraphs of argument, and it is usually available if the practice was chosen well.
The barriers section should be organised rather than listed, and the standard levels are clinician, organisation, patient and system. Clinician barriers include awareness, disagreement with the evidence, and habit. Organisational barriers include cost, workflow, training and competing priorities. Patient barriers include preference and access. System barriers include reimbursement that pays for the old practice and regulation that has not caught up. Grouping them that way makes the fourth section straightforward, because a remedy has to act at the level of its barrier — education does not fix a reimbursement problem and a policy change does not fix a workflow one. Then the fifth section, which most papers forget: the AHRQ site publishes clinician and consumer summaries, decision aids and implementation toolkits, and naming the specific ones relevant to your practice is what the requirement is asking for rather than a general remark that resources exist.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Select a practice with documented uptake data.
- 02Quantify an implementation gap rather than asserting it.
- 03Organise barriers by the level at which they operate.
- 04Match each remedy to the level of its barrier.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A practice drawn from the AHRQ comparative effectiveness site.
- 02An assessment of implementation extent, with figures.
- 03Barriers organised by level.
- 04Remedies matched to barrier levels.
- 05The site's own translation resources, named specifically.
Practice, uptake, barriers, remedies, resources
The practice
Describe the practice and the evidence behind it.
Extent of implementation
Report what is known about uptake, with figures and variation.
Barriers by level
Organise clinician, organisational, patient and system barriers.
Remedies and site resources
Match a remedy to each barrier level and name the site's translation tools.
The site's own resources are part of the answer
Recommended databases
- AHRQ Effective Health Care Program
- PubMed Central
- CINAHL
- Implementation Science
Search sequence
- 1.Browse the AHRQ site before choosing, and pick a practice with uptake data available.
- 2.Search the practice AND adoption or utilisation for figures.
- 3.Read one implementation framework so the barrier grouping is principled.
- 4.List the specific summaries, decision aids or toolkits the site offers for your practice.
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 a levelled analysis.
- 02
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 evidence, context and facilitation separately, useful for matching remedies to levels.
- 03
About PCORI | PCORI
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute · 2024
The comparative effectiveness field the selected practice comes out of, and what it is intended to inform.
- 04
What can organisational theory offer knowledge translation in healthcare? A thematic and lexical analysis
BMC Health Services Research · 2018
Organisational theory applied to knowledge translation, which is where the organisation-level barriers get their vocabulary.
- 05
Nursing managers' perspectives on facilitators of and barriers to evidence-based practice: A cross-sectional study
Nursing Open (Wiley), via PubMed Central · 2023
Reported facilitators and barriers to evidence-based practice, evidence for the clinician level rather than assumption.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Choosing a practice from elsewhere when the site is specified.
- Asserting slow implementation with no adoption data.
- Listing barriers without grouping them by level.
- Proposing education as the remedy for structural barriers.
- Omitting the resources section entirely.
Submission checklist
- Did the practice come from the specified site?
- Are there adoption figures in the assessment section?
- Are barriers grouped by level?
- Does each remedy act at its barrier's level?
- Have you named specific resources from the site?
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Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
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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.

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Argumentation and thesis development
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