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

Because of the many unknowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers and the public turned to trusted organizations for guidance about how to prevent and treat this disease. National and international health organizations such as the Public Health Agency of Canada, the World Health Organization, and medical societies used the emerging research to create recommendations. Health authorities then had to decide how to follow these recommendations. This project will learn from the experiences of people who participated in creating and using recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will use a study design called "exploratory sequential mixed-methods study", in which we will include a diverse group of participants based on their specific role in the development and use of the recommendations (for example, organizing the process, reviewing evidence, or making decisions), the context (for instance, recommendations created in a high-income country like Canada versus those created in a low-income country), and gender. We will first conduct in-depth interviews to learn which challenges people faced and the helpful strategies they applied. Based on their answers, we will create a survey that we will distribute across different groups worldwide to learn the most common challenges and strategies. We will then integrate what we learned in the interviews and survey to draw conclusions. 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 to provide 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.