Sustaining implementation facilitation: a model for facilitator resilience.

Olmos-Ochoa TT, Ganz DA, Barnard JM, Penney L, Finley EP, Hamilton AB, Chawla N. Sustaining implementation facilitation: a model for facilitator resilience. Implementation science communications. 2021 Jun 21; 2(1):65.

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Implementation facilitators enable healthcare staff to effectively implement change, yet little is known about their affective (e.g., emotional, mental, physical) experiences of facilitation. We propose an expansion to the Integrated Promoting Action on Research in Health Services (i-PARIHS) framework that introduces facilitation intensity and facilitator resilience to better assess facilitators' affective experiences. METHODS: We used an instrumental case study and facilitator data (logged reflections and debrief session notes) from the Coordination Toolkit and Coaching initiative to conceptualize facilitation intensity and facilitator resilience and to better understand the psychological impact of the facilitation process on facilitator effectiveness and implementation success. RESULTS: We define facilitation intensity as both the quantitative and/or qualitative measure of the volume of tasks and activities needed to engage and motivate recipients in implementation, and the psychological impact on the facilitator of conducting facilitation tasks and activities. We define facilitator resilience as the ability to cope with and adapt to the complexities of facilitation in order to effectively engage and motivate staff, while nurturing and sustaining hope, self-efficacy, and adaptive coping behaviors in oneself. CONCLUSIONS: Facilitators' affective experience may help to identify potential relationships between the facilitation factors we propose (facilitation intensity and facilitator resilience). Future studies should test ways of reliably measuring facilitation intensity and facilitator resilience and specify their relationships in greater detail. By supporting facilitator resilience, healthcare delivery systems may help sustain the skilled facilitator workforce necessary for continued practice improvement. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The project was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov ( NCT03063294 ) on February 24, 2017.