JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

There is current evidence that a proportion of healthcare services provided to patients do not align with best evidence. Nurse champion, defined as a nurse who either volunteers or is identified by management to facilitate or promote the implementation of an innovation (e.g., new knowledge or practice) is an important factor for implementation success. The existing literature describes healthcare champions’ attributes, roles, behaviours, the processes in which they might enable change, and their effectiveness at facilitating implementation. However, a more detailed exploration of the nurse champion concept is needed. Further, despite the prolific use of nurse champions in healthcare implementation, there is a gap in the literature pertaining to what nurse champion training initiatives exist, what competencies are important to be a nurse champion, and whether current training initiatives are effective in preparing nurse champions. Lastly, the extent to which equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is considered in the nurse champion literature is unknown.

Objective:

Our study objectives are to: 1) develop a preliminary conceptual understanding of nurse champions; 2) describe the characteristics of existing champion training initiatives in healthcare that prepare nurse champions and synthesize the competencies that are covered in these champion training initiatives, 3) synthesize the findings of studies that examined the effectiveness of nurse champion training initiatives in preparing nurses to be effective champions, and; 4) evaluate the extent to which equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are considered in studies that define nurse champions and in studies describing or evaluating nurse champion training initiatives attended by nurse champions.

Methods:

This scoping review will follow the JBI methodology. We will systematically search eight electronic databases using a PRESSed search strategy. We will also search for grey literature (e.g. thesis and dissertations). We will upload the records from our database searches into Covidence. Two individuals from the research team will perform title and abstract and full text screening independently and in duplicate using a piloted inclusion and exclusion criteria. Two individuals will perform data extraction and quality appraisal independently and in duplicate. Conflicts will be resolved with consensus. We will perform various forms of content analysis to address our varying research questions and objectives. Our results will be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist, the Evidence-Based Checklist for Improving Scoping Review Quality, the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) checklist, and the PRISMA Checklist.

Results:

We expect to present the results in a scoping review in 2026.

Conclusions:

The result of this research will provide recommendations for current and future nurse champion training initiatives. Although this review is limited to the nursing discipline, the results may be transferable to understanding champions in other contexts. Clinical Trial: Not applicable