Practice Integration as an Effective Educational Strategy

Bundles are composed of individually established practices supported by research that, when combined, structure patient care. Implementing bundles improves patient outcomes. The ABCDEF initiative is an example of a bundled approach that improves outcomes of critically ill patients that are related to the likelihood of hospital death within 7 days, delirium and coma days, physical restraint use, intensive care unit readmission, and discharge disposition, with outcomes being proportional to the number of appropriate components performed. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to implement practice integration as an educational strategy to increase nursing knowledge of complex topics and, specifically, components of the ABCDEF bundle. Nurses’ knowledge of all the BDE components of the ABCDEF bundle increased after implementing practice integration. Findings from this project support the use of resources to implement practice integration as an educational strategy for comprehensive concepts, specifically the BDE components of the ABCDEF bundle.