As part of continuing your work on your evidence-based project proposal, identify one to three outcomes of interest. That is, what you hope to change or improve based on the implementation of your project (your project’s dependent variable). For example, if you are designing an intervention to reduce hospital re-admission rates for patients with heart failure, the outcome is re-admission rates. Another example would be a mindfulness-based intervention for critical care nurses to reduce burnout; in this case, burnout is the outcome of interest. Once you have identified the outcomes of interest in your project, you need to determine how each outcome will be measured. Consider the examples above. How might you measure re-admission rates? (For example, you might measure the percentage of patients with heart failure who are re-admitted with a diagnosis of heart failure within 90 days of being discharged). How about measuring burnout in critical-care nurses? Would you use the Maslach Burnout Inventory, or some other tool? As you can see, there are different ways to measure outcomes.
