Identifying the Top Ten Unanswered Questions in Community Nursing: A James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership in Community Nursing
Table 1
An outline of the steps involved in the James Lind alliance priority setting process.
The priority setting partnership process
(1)
Create a steering group with equal representation of patients, carers, and clinicians and strong links to relevant partner organisations; and raise awareness of the project in order to maximise support and participation
(2)
Gather evidence for uncertainties by asking patients, carers, and clinicians to respond to a survey asking what questions they have for research and by searching existing literature to identify gaps
(3)
Refining questions and uncertainties—the steering groups work with a JLA information specialist to create a long-list of summary questions from the survey responses
(4)
Evidence checking—the long list of summary questions is checked against the existing research evidence to ensure that they have not previously been answered by research studies
(5)
Interim prioritisation—through consensus, the steering group prioritises the identified uncertainties by asking patients, carers, and clinicians to complete a second survey to rank the research questions
(6)
Final prioritisation—this is generally a one-day workshop facilitated by the JLA with input from the steering group; up to 30 patients, carers, and clinicians will participate in discussion and ranking to determine the top 10 questions for research studies
(7)
Publish and promote the top 10 research priorities—the top 10 are announced and published and a publication, and promotion plan is implemented to disseminate the results and influence researchers
