Since the initiative’s inception, BPSO health-care and academic organizations have developed creative strategies for successfully implementing best practice guidelines, and evaluating their impact through their tenure.

In 2010 an impact survey of all BPSO® designate and candidate organizations was conducted to:

• Discover the degree to which the RNAO best practice guidelines have spread throughout each organization, in particular, the number of nurses, units/teams and patients that have been influenced by the guidelines.
• Identify the RNAO guidelines that have had the most impact on nursing practice and client outcomes and those that align most closely with the organizations’ initiatives.
• Identify structures and/or processes that have been utilized to facilitate sustainability
• Identify which guideline implementation strategies and BPSO supports were most useful and effective

To accomplish the above stated objectives, a web survey with 24 questions was developed. The project lead and sponsor from each of the 37 BPSO® organizations were invited to submit a response on behalf of their organization.

Responses were received from 29 BPSO® organizations (78% of BPSOs at the time of the survey).

A brief report was written to summarize the results of the survey that demonstrated the impact of the RNAO BPSO® initiative.