Translating guidelines into nursing practice remains a considerable challenge. Until now, little attention has been paid to which interventions are used in practice to implement guidelines on changing clinical nursing practice. This cross-sectional study determined the current ranges and rates of implementation-related interventions in Austria, Germany, and The Netherlands and explored possible differences between these countries. An online questionnaire based on the conceptual framework of implementation interventions (professional, organizational, financial, and regulatory) from the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC) data collection checklist was used to gather data from nursing homes and hospitals. Provision of written materials is the most frequently used professional implementation intervention (85%), whereas changes in the patient record system rank foremost among organisational interventions (78%). Financial incentives for nurses are rarely used. More interventions were used in Austria and Germany than in The Netherlands (20.3/20.2/17.3). Professional interventions are used more frequently in Germany and financial interventions more frequently in The Netherlands. Implementation efforts focus mainly on professional and organisational interventions. Nurse managers and other responsible personnel should direct their focus to a broader array of implementation interventions using the four different categories of EPOC’s conceptual framework. 1. Introduction Nurses are expected to deliver care that is regularly updated with research findings, and the volume of new scientific evidence for good clinical practice is growing quickly. This research-based knowledge should be used, for example, as a basis for decision making [1] and for providing evidence-based care to promote positive patient outcomes [2, 3]. Legal regulations commit governments to providing their citizens with healthcare based on the acknowledged state of scientific knowledge; for example, in Austria, there is the Health Care Quality Act (Section 3) [4]. Regulations also require nurses to update their knowledge and skills according to the latest scientific findings in nursing science. In Austria, this is governed by the Nursing Act (Section 4, paragraphs 1 and 2) [5]. However, numerous studies over the past decade have highlighted a failure to routinely translate research findings into daily practice [6–11]. A large gap between what is known from research and what happens in practice still exists [10, 12], and introducing change is far from straightforward [13]. As a
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