Briana Rigau
Co-creating a writing group to build organizational capacity for scholarly practice in early intervention
There is a gap between the high-quality and evidence-based practices that EI practitioners should be delivering and the care that is actually provided (Bruder, 2010), necessitating quality improvement (QI) to fill this gap. While engagement in health services research (HSR) projects that leverage quality electronic data capture can help to fill this gap, EI practitioners need support to meaningfully engage in this type of research as part of their employment. This OTD project addresses the need for EI programs to implement a QI initiative to improve practitioner capacity for HSR engagement to sustain the Scholarship of Practice (Hammel et al., 2015) in an EI organizational context. The purpose of this project was to co-design a three-part professional development opportunity to strengthen EI practitioner capacity for HSR engagement at a large, urban, and non-university affiliated EI program in Colorado. Main findings have provided initial insights into the feasibility, acceptability, and level of practitioner engagement with the current offering, as well as ways to optimize it prior to further implementation at RMHS.