Knowledge-to-care: is there a best way of support practitioners to getting evidence into practice? An ongoing debate

Getting evidence into practice remains a stubborn problem. To get knowledge-to-care (K2C) we identify five 'impact components': improvement science, implementation science, knowledge mobilisation, patient and public involvement and engagement, and co-working. In this article we have (1) provided a simple definition for each component, (2) established an overview of whom, what, when, where, why and how components have been reported and/or combined in published literature, and (3) enhanced understanding of how components are selected and combined. We (1) identified seminal papers to capture common definitions of components of impact, their synonyms and evolution, (2) sampled the most relevant papers (searching CINAHL and Medline, from 2018 to 2021) to map the landscape where one or more impact component had been applied in empirical research, (3) conducted focus groups and (4) a survey to deepen our understanding of these issues from practitioner and researcher perspectives. We found differentiation between components difficult due to multiple definitions and overlapping features. Workshops and survey demonstrate blurred application of components with participants drawing on a common pool of strategies to influence practice. Our future intention is to develop strategies to support practitioners to advance uptake of evidence-based care by demystifying the 'science' of components and how they may be applied in practice. To this end, we invite debate regarding the questions: How do we 'science up' without hindering application of implementation science (impS), improvement science (impR) and knowledge mobilisation (KMb) in practice? Are the differences between impS, impR and KMb real, or simply in the eye of the beholder? Is there a need to go beyond the potentially 'tribal' labels of impR, impS and KMb and consider more deeply specific ways of working?