Overview of CCR-Net

• This PowerPoint presentation provides an overview of CCR-Net.

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Values

• Interdisciplinary
• Collaborative
• Personal growth and achievement
• Scientific and creative excellence
• Respect and responsibility for all members
• Joy of effort
  

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Network Goals

• To continue developing knowledge translation and knowledge dissemination strategies
• To continue developing and evaluating performance measurement tools
• To develop and evaluate health technology that is designed to examine and improve patient outcomes and optimize resource utilization
• To provide methodological support and expertise to local, regional and national initiatives relevant to CCR-Net’s mission
• To develop sustainable financial capacity to enable CCR-Net to accomplish its goals
  

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Network history

The notion of intensive and critical care units forming a research network to share information and improve patient care delivery was conceptualized in 1991 by the Ontario Working Group in Critical Care. In 1992, clinical scientists at the Victoria Hospital Research Institute in London organized the Southwestern Ontario Critical Care Research (SOCCR) Network with start-up funding from The Richard and Jean Ivey Research Foundation.

Building upon initial success, the research Network has expanded beyond Southwestern Ontario and into Central & Northern Ontario and Western & Eastern Canada. What began with 11 hospitals in Southwestern Ontario collaborating on research transfer, has grown to encompass a broad spectrum of 9 teaching hospitals, 24 community hospitals, and many industry and government partners.

To acknowledge the growth of this collaboration, Network partners suggested its designation be changed to: Critical Care Research Network (CCR-Net).

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The Network Advantage

Hospitals, industry and government have an opportunity to come together and lead the way to shaping the future of critical care.

Each partner brings its own suggestions and needs to CCR-Net. Its benefits may include one or more of:

• evaluation of critical care activities, organization and strategic planning;
• development of guidelines and policies, as they relate to critical care services for the patient, unit or institution;
• understanding of critical care management structures and efficiencies;
• research into effective treatments and technologies for patients;
• development, marketing and evaluation of products for the critical care environment;
• identification of cost management strategies;
• measurement of outcomes and efficacy of treatment modalities; and
• management of continuous quality improvement initiatives.
  

It is the commitment of the CCR-Net to:

• publish early results of our projects,
• provide both standard and specific reports,
• continue to recruit hospitals to build its critical care database ,
• assist partner hospitals in an electronic data input program, and
• continue to champion research opportunities for partner hospitals.
  

As the CCR-Net grows, we will share a story of success that will serve as an example in which people who do research, and people who use research, can find a common ground for collaboration that ultimately benefits critical care patients.

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Educational Services

The need for education in the evolving critical care environment is threefold:

1. to create an awareness of the research and policy issues which must be addressed;
2. to disseminate the knowledge gained through these efforts; and
3. to provide the new skills required by all stakeholders as terms such as technology assessment and economic evaluation become part of their vocabulary, and programs such as quality improvement and practice guidelines drive their daily operations.
   

The CCR-Net is committed to assisting partner hospitals in the continuing education necessary to support research transfer to the decision-maker. The expression “continuing education” has never had greater importance!

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Research Services

The CCR-Net believes that research must be continually tested to be sound. The CCR-Net, therefore, provides the collaborative efforts of academic researchers, government, health care providers and private industry to identify issues and pursue research into the effective and efficient provision of critical care services.

Under the paradigm of evidence-based decision making, our specific interests include:

• technology assessment
• clinical practice guidelines
• quality improvement
• organization and management
• economic evaluations
• clinical trials
• industrial product development, evaluation and marketing

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Promoting research transfer

As variation exists in the delivery of the health care services, a proportion of health care delivered may be inappropriate. From the decision makers' perspective, a compelling need therefore exists to both synthesize and transfer relevant research information in a timely manner. Our collective awareness of the need to better understand and manage research transfer has resulted in an expanding knowledge base about the process of research utilization.

Research transfer, also referred to as 'research utilization', is the transfer of specific research-based knowledge into practice through a systematic series of activities.

Barriers to effectively transferring the results of research into the decision making process have been created between practitioners and researchers who, traditionally, have worked in isolation from each other. The need for them to work cooperatively to break down these barriers is paramount in the ever-changing health-care environment. The CCR-Net has addressed these concerns by bringing together teams of researchers, practitioners and administrative personnel with the purpose of equipping them with tools to meet future health care challenges.

The CCR-Net stresses a participatory approach to its research projects. This principle is the key for successful research transfer, and the importance of involving individuals ultimately responsible for implementing research-based changes has long been emphasized. Member hospital participation in CCR-Net research is therefore encouraged throughout all phases of each project.

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Network Methods

Projects now underway in the CCR-Net were developed during our research workshops with participating hospitals, and through discussions with Network partners as ideas surfaced in the minds of researchers or community partners.

The source of the ideas for new projects is not of paramount importance...the value of answering the question and the ability to do so is paramount.

As a collaborative Network, we have simply agreed to begin conversations with questions that sound like this: “I was thinking this question might be interesting to ask, is that of practical interest in your institution?” or “We struggle with these decisions in our ICU, is there any existing research or pooled experience to help us?” or “We can't find any information to help us, can we design a research question to develop our own answers?”

Therefore, the ideal project for the CCR-Net has the following characteristics:

• Relevance, to the patient population, staff and/or administration of our partners, which is assured through discussions between research leaders and participating hospitals in the development of the research question.
  
  
• Leadership, which includes both a research partner to ensure appropriate methodology, and practitioner partners (physician, nurse, allied health professional, administrator) to ensure the question is relevant and its results are meaningful.
  
  
• Achievable objectives, by standards which might include the availability of funding, complexity of methodology, or expected benefits to participants and their patients that clearly outweigh the volunteer work required to complete the project.

Each project is managed by a partnership of at least one researcher and one practitioner who report to the Network administration on a weekly basis regarding progress, concerns and upcoming milestones. These meetings are attended by the researchers, and serve as a sounding board for future project ideas, the development of grant proposals and the identification of potential funding partners. Practitioner partners often attend during the development stage or at other key decision points.

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Continuing education on Web pages

Our mission is to promote the Internet as a tool for communication and interactive learning for the community hospital members of the CCR-Net. To further these goals we have developed:

• pages for continuing education
• online discussion forums
• critically appraised topics, and
• links to many other health related Web pages

Our eventual goal is to provide an educational resource that is valuable to our community hospitals and is funded in partnership with responsible industrial partners. The Web site address is: http://ahsn.lhsc.on.ca

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