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Background Clinical practice guidelines are intended to bridge the research-practice gap, yet little is known about how critical care nurses adopt guidelines. Feeding tube verification practices remain variable and have led to patient harm and death. Objectives To examine factors influencing critical care nurses' adoption of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) practice alert on verification of feeding tube placement and its 4 recommended clinical practices. Methods Critical care nurses were invited to participate in a national, online questionnaire, guided by Rogers' diffusion of innovation framework. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used for data analysis. Alpha level was set at 0.05. Results Fifty-five percent of the 370 participating nurses were aware of the practice alert, and 45% had adopted it in practice. Only 29% of the adopters had also implemented all 4 clinical practices. Significant predictors of adoption included BSN or higher nursing education and guideline characteristics of observability and trialability. Predictors of implementation of the clinical practices included staff nurse/charge nurse role, academic medical center, research/web-based information sources, and perception of a policy. Policy was the only significant predictor of implementation of all 4 practices. Adoption of the practice alert was also a predictor for 2 of 4 clinical practices. Conclusions Personal and organizational factors influenced implementation of practices associated with an AACN practice alert. Although a research-practice gap exists, the practice alert was a significant source of information for 2 of the clinical practices.

BACKGROUNDThe American Association of Critical-Care Nurses practice alert on verification of feeding tube placement makes evidence-based practice recommendations to guide nursing management of adult patients with blindly inserted feeding tubes. Many bedside verification methods do not allow detection of improper positioning of a feeding tube within the gastrointestinal tract, thereby increasing aspiration risk.OBJECTIVESTo determine how the expected practices from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses practice alert were implemented by critical care nurses.METHODSThis study was part of a larger national, online survey that was completed by 370 critical care nurses. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.RESULTSSeventy-eight percent of nurses used a variety of methods to verify initial placement of feeding tubes, although 14% were unaware that tube position should be confirmed every 4 hours. Despite the inaccuracy of auscultation methods, only 12% of nurses avoided this practice all of the time.CONCLUSIONSImplementation of expected clinical practices from this guideline varied. Nurses are encouraged to implement expected practices from this evidence-based, peer reviewed practice alert to minimize risk for patient harm.