The level of adherence to best-practice guidelines by interprofessional teams with and without acute care nurse practitioners in cardiac surgery: A study protocol

BACKGROUND: Acute care nurse practitioners (ACNPs) in postoperative cardiac surgery settings provide significant benefits to patients and organizations. Recent studies have suggested that ACNPs increase the level of adherence to best-practice guidelines by interprofessional teams. It is however, unknown whether interprofessional teams with ACNP are associated with higher levels of adherence to best-practice guidelines compared to interprofessional teams without ACNPs. Furthermore, no extraction tool is available to measure the level of adherence to best-practice guidelines by interprofessional teams in postoperative cardiac surgery settings. This project aims to measure and examine the level of adherence to best-practice guidelines of interprofessional teams with and without ACNPs in a postoperative cardiac surgery setting in Québec, Canada. METHODS: A retrospective observational study will be conducted of 300 patients hospitalized between January 1, 2019 and January 31, 2020 in a postoperative cardiac surgery unit in Québec, Canada. Data will be collected from patient health records and electronic databases. An extraction tool will be developed based on systematic review of the literature, and will include best-practice guidelines and confounding variables related to patient and interprofessional teams’ characteristics. Content and criterion validation, and a pilot-test will be conducted for the development of the tool. A multivariate linear regression model will be developed and adjusted for confounding variables to examine the association between interprofessional teams with and without ACNPs, and level of adherence to best-practice guidelines by those teams. DISCUSSION: This project represents the first study to measure and examine the level of adherence to best-practice guidelines by interprofessional teams with and without ACNPs in a postoperative cardiac surgery setting. The findings of this project will generate empirical data focusing on the contribution of ACNPs within interprofessional teams, and ultimately enhance the delivery of high quality and evidence-based care for patients and families.