UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

A multidimensional approach to assessing intervention fidelity in a process evaluation of audit and feedback interventions to reduce unnecessary blood transfusions: a study protocol

Lorencatto, F; Gould, NJ; McIntyre, SA; During, C; Bird, J; Walwyn, R; Cicero, R; ... Francis, JJ; + view all (2016) A multidimensional approach to assessing intervention fidelity in a process evaluation of audit and feedback interventions to reduce unnecessary blood transfusions: a study protocol. Implementation Science , 11 , Article 163. 10.1186/s13012-016-0528-x. Green open access

[thumbnail of art%3A10.1186%2Fs13012-016-0528-x.pdf]
Preview
Text
art%3A10.1186%2Fs13012-016-0528-x.pdf - Published Version

Download (884kB) | Preview

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In England, NHS Blood and Transplant conducts national audits of transfusion and provides feedback to hospitals to promote evidence-based practice. Audits demonstrate 20% of transfusions fall outside guidelines. The AFFINITIE programme (Development & Evaluation of Audit and Feedback INterventions to Increase evidence-based Transfusion practIcE) involves two linked, 2×2 factorial, cluster-randomised trials, each evaluating two theoretically-enhanced audit and feedback interventions to reduce unnecessary blood transfusions in UK hospitals. The first intervention concerns the content/format of feedback reports. The second aims to support hospital transfusion staff to plan their response to feedback and includes a web-based toolkit and telephone support. Interpretation of trials is enhanced by comprehensively assessing intervention fidelity. However, reviews demonstrate fidelity evaluations are often limited, typically only assessing whether interventions were delivered as intended. This protocol presents methods for assessing fidelity across five dimensions proposed by the Behaviour Change Consortium fidelity framework, including intervention designer-, provider- and recipient-levels. METHODS: (1) Design: Intervention content will be specified in intervention manuals in terms of component behaviour change techniques (BCTs). Treatment differentiation will be examined by comparing BCTs across intervention/standard practice, noting the proportion of unique/convergent BCTs. (2) Training: draft feedback reports and audio-recorded role-play telephone support scenarios will be content analysed to assess intervention providers' competence to deliver manual-specified BCTs. (3) Delivery: intervention materials (feedback reports, toolkit) and audio-recorded telephone support session transcripts will be content analysed to assess actual delivery of manual-specified BCTs during the intervention period. (4) Receipt and (5) enactment: questionnaires, semi-structured interviews based on the Theoretical Domains Framework, and objective web-analytics data (report downloads, toolkit usage patterns) will be analysed to assess hospital transfusion staff exposure to, understanding and enactment of the interventions, and to identify contextual barriers/enablers to implementation. Associations between observed fidelity and trial outcomes (% unnecessary transfusions) will be examined using mediation analyses. DISCUSSION: If the interventions have acceptable fidelity, then results of the AFFINITIE trials can be attributed to effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness, of the interventions. Hence, this comprehensive assessment of fidelity will be used to interpret trial findings. These methods may inform fidelity assessments in future trials. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN 15490813 . Registered 11/03/2015.

Type: Article
Title: A multidimensional approach to assessing intervention fidelity in a process evaluation of audit and feedback interventions to reduce unnecessary blood transfusions: a study protocol
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s13012-016-0528-x
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13012-016-0528-x
Additional information: © The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Keywords: Audit and feedback, Blood transfusion, Fidelity, Implementation, Process evaluation, Randomised controlled trial, Research protocol
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1532724
Downloads since deposit
38Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item