Understanding the barriers and facilitators for developing and implementing evidence-based practice guidelines during a pandemic: An exploratory sequential mixed-methods study.

Because everything was unknown, healthcare workers, patients, and public health officials turned to reliable organizations for advice on how to prevent, diagnose, and manage COVID-19. National and international health organizations used the results of emerging research to provide recommendations for healthcare workers and the public. This project will learn from the experiences of people who participated in creating and using these recommendations. We will use interviews and surveys to collect data about the challenges they faced and the helpful strategies they applied. We will consider five groups who represent the main groups involved in the creation and use of recommendations based on research evidence: 1) people belonging to the group who organizes the process (e.g staff at the World Health Organization), 2) people who are experts in the methodology used to create the recommendations, 3) people who participate as experts (e.g doctors, nurses, and patients), 4) people who support the work by summarizing and appraising the research evidence, and 5) people responsible for using the recommendations (e.g healthcare workers, or members of scientific tables deciding if they will implement a measure for the general public). We will draw conclusions by considering and integrating the different sources of data we will obtain, and we will reflect on how these findings are specific to the pandemic. Our team of researchers is composed of experts in research methods and the development of evidence-based recommendations. Most of the team members also participated in creating recommendations for COVID-19. Our results will help organizations to plan and be better prepared for providing quick and trustworthy recommendations in future pandemics and will increase the chances of achieving better health outcomes. Therefore, our study will produce knowledge that will benefit the health of Canadians by improving the healthcare system's response to pandemics and health emergencies