Identifying the Priority Evidence-Practice Gaps in Palliative Care: Health Professional Perspectives. A white paper published by the Flinders Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying

Evidence-practice gaps are a major health services problem. They refer to the large, ongoing discrepancy between treatments proven to be effective by well-designed research and treatments provided to patients within healthcare settings. As Visser, Hadley, and Wee summarised, the inherent complexities associated with palliative care have posed difficulties for the uptake of evidence based practice.1 This could in part explain Kalies et al suggestion that evidence based practice is particularly lacking in palliative care. However, the priority evidence-practice gaps in palliative care, and how to address them, are poorly understood. This study aims to address this by seeking the perspectives of specialist palliative care health professionals, as opposed to the perspectives of persons who are simply in a position to direct clinicians. More specifically, this study provides an understanding of: specialist palliative care clinicians’ current level of awareness of processes for improving healthcare delivery; how clinicians see their role in effecting clinical change in the workplace; specific areas of palliative care practice that clinicians believe need improving; clinician’s awareness of existing evidence that could serve to improve a specific area of care; the knowledge translation strategies clinicians perceive to be most beneficial in achieving clinical practice change in a workplace setting; and the
characteristics of the palliative care field that might contribute to the less than optimal research uptake in practice.

In addition, this study informs a generalizable methodology for identifying and prioritizing evidence-practice gaps across a range of health fields. In doing so, it is hoped that this study may contribute to more systematic and generalizable knowledge building translation research. This is particularly important, as Shojania and Grimshaw point out that quality improvement efforts to address evidence-practice gaps, should also be evidence-based.