Knowledge and attitudes of Implementation Support Practitioners—Findings from a systematic integrative review

Leah Bührmann; Pia Driessen; Allison Metz; Katie Burke; Leah Bartley; Cecilie Varsi; Bianca Albers

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0267533

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 26, 2021
7 Mar 2022 Decision Letter - Eleanor Ochodo, Editor PONE-D-21-27502Knowledge and attitudes of Implementation Support Practitioners - Findings from a systematic integrative reviewPLOS ONE Dear Leah Bührmann, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. This is a generally well written paper but the reporting of the conclusion and methodology could be improved. Please submit your revised manuscript by 28 March 2022. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. 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We note that this manuscript is a systematic review or meta-analysis; our author guidelines therefore require that you use PRISMA guidance to help improve reporting quality of this type of study. Please upload copies of the completed PRISMA checklist as Supporting Information with a file name “PRISMA checklist”. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The authors have used a systematic integrative approach to describe the knowledge and attitude of Implementation Support Practitioners. The work builds on previous works by the authors. The introduction section is well done and clearly highlights the gap in consolidation in knowledge and attitudes aspects in Implementation area. The methods, results and discussion are well described. The potential drawbacks of the study like possibility of omission of key studies, authors stating number of articles describing knowledge and attitude rather than number of ISPs have all been described very well in the study limitations area Authors have mentioned the seven attitude thematic area in the abstract, these are not numbered like it appears on page 23 of 55. I advise that these thematic areas are numbered in the abstract Reviewer #2: The authors describe the knowledge and attitudes of Implementation Support Practitioners (ISPs) through a systematic review. The content of the work is important and generally well presented but the methodology of the review is unclear. Please find below my comments: 1. I find the conclusion vague and not really useful in answering the aim of the review which was to present the knowledge and attitudes of ISPs. Could the authors please revise the conclusion by possibly highlighting the key knowledge and attitude themes? 2. The methodology section could be improved as follows: a. Please define what is meant by an integrative review in the methods section. I struggled to understand what is meant by an integrative until I read the limitations section. In addition please clarify why this is not a scoping review? b. Please report the search section according to PRISMA for literature searches ;PRISMA-S(https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/prisma-s/) c. Sources searched for literature were broad including social media. Which social media platforms were searched? d. Were there any limitations in the search with regard to publication date, language, type of publications? e. Please state the inclusion and exclusion criteria for studies included in the review. What type of studies were eligible? Type of populations and geographical settings? Type of Intervention or concept? Type of Outcomes? f. Knowing the type of eligible studies will help understand why only randomized trials were included for quality assessment. g. How were the searches, data extraction and quality assessment done? Was an systematic review application such as covidence used to conduct the searches? How many reviewers did the study selection and data extraction? Was study selection done independently? h. Was the data extraction form piloted and standardized? Which software or online platform was used to conduct data extraction? i. It would be helpful to mention a priori in the methods section how the quality assessment was done. More details about the tool used for quality assessment, criteria for scoring? j. Being a review, please also state in the analysis section that results were synthesized narratively/qualitatively. This will prevent further queries about quantitative results or analysis. 3. Results section a. I dont find Table 1 helpful. A table of main study characteristics if applicable is better. Some information about the studies is more useful than listing the references only. Else that table can be moved to the appendices. b. Figure 1 flow chart. Please specify in the first text box under search that these were electronic databases. c. The results of the quality assessment are not clearly presented in the manuscript. ****** 6. 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Revision 1
28 Mar 2022 Author Response Dear Editor and Reviewers, We appreciate the comments from the reviewers and the opportunity to submit a revised version. We incorporated the reviewers’ suggestions and believe that the comments highly contributed to the quality of this manuscript. Responses to your specific comments are detailed below. Reviewer #1: The authors have used a systematic integrative approach to describe the knowledge and attitude of Implementation Support Practitioners. The work builds on previous works by the authors. The introduction section is well done and clearly highlights the gap in consolidation in knowledge and attitudes aspects in Implementation area. The methods, results and discussion are well described. The potential drawbacks of the study like possibility of omission of key studies, authors stating number of articles describing knowledge and attitude rather than number of ISPs have all been described very well in the study limitations area. Authors have mentioned the seven attitude thematic area in the abstract, these are not numbered like it appears on page 23 of 55. I advise that these thematic areas are numbered in the abstract Response: Thank you very much for this suggestion. We have included enumeration in the abstract and agree that this enhances readability. Reviewer #2: The authors describe the knowledge and attitudes of Implementation Support Practitioners (ISPs) through a systematic review. The content of the work is important and generally well presented but the methodology of the review is unclear. Please find below my comments: 1. I find the conclusion vague and not really useful in answering the aim of the review which was to present the knowledge and attitudes of ISPs. Could the authors please revise the conclusion by possibly highlighting the key knowledge and attitude themes? Response: Thank you for this comment. We added a few sentences to the conclusion to highlight the key knowledge and attitude themes identified in this review (p. 30, l. 655 – 661). 2. The methodology section could be improved as follows: a. Please define what is meant by an integrative review in the methods section. I struggled to understand what is meant by an integrative until I read the limitations section. In addition please clarify why this is not a scoping review? b. Please report the search section according to PRISMA for literature searches ;PRISMA-S(https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/prisma-s/) c. Sources searched for literature were broad including social media. Which social media platforms were searched? d. Were there any limitations in the search with regard to publication date, language, type of publications? e. Please state the inclusion and exclusion criteria for studies included in the review. What type of studies were eligible? Type of populations and geographical settings? Type of Intervention or concept? Type of Outcomes? f. Knowing the type of eligible studies will help understand why only randomized trials were included for quality assessment. g. How were the searches, data extraction and quality assessment done? Was an systematic review application such as covidence used to conduct the searches? How many reviewers did the study selection and data extraction? Was study selection done independently? h. Was the data extraction form piloted and standardized? Which software or online platform was used to conduct data extraction? i. It would be helpful to mention a priori in the methods section how the quality assessment was done. More details about the tool used for quality assessment, criteria for scoring? j. Being a review, please also state in the analysis section that results were synthesized narratively/qualitatively. This will prevent further queries about quantitative results or analysis. Response: Thank you for your comments regarding the methodology section. Please find below our remarks to the points you raised. Re a. We included more details about the integrative review as a knowledge synthesis method (p. 8, l. 177-178). Our review provides more than an orientation and mapping of the role and attributes of ISPs in the field but rather integrates diverse data sources on ISP roles to develop a holistic understanding of the concept. That differentiates our systematic integrative review from a scoping review. Re b. In addition to the general PRISMA checklist we have already used, we filled in the PRISMA-S checklist and attached it in the S2 Appendix. Re c. We have included the social media channels that we have used for our literature search (p. 9, l. 203). Re d. We have added a table on inclusion and exclusion criteria that includes the language and type of publication (p. 10-11). No limitations were defined for publication dates. Re e. We have added a table on inclusion and exclusion criteria (p. 10-11). Re f. We fully agree (also see e.). Re g. We used the platform Covidence to screen the literature, this detail was added to the manuscript (p. 9, l. 187). All included articles were uploaded to Dedoose to code the data, as stated in the “Data analysis” subsection (p. 12, l. 222). The subsections “Literature search” and “Data evaluation” provide information on how the search and quality assessment (also see i.) were performed, respectively. We have included a paragraph on the constitution of the research team in the beginning of the methodology section (p. 9, l. 183-187). Re h. The data extraction form was standardized but not systematically piloted. We have used the platform Covidence to screen the literature and Dedoose to code and analyse the data, as stated in the “Data analysis” subsection (p. 12, l. 222). Re i. We provided more detailed information on the quality assessment and the framework used for this (Hodder et al., 2014) in the “Data evaluation” subsection (p. 11, l. 211-219). Re j. We included this detail in the “Data analysis” section (p. 13, l. 243-244). 3. Results section a. I dont find Table 1 helpful. A table of main study characteristics if applicable is better. Some information about the studies is more useful than listing the references only. Else that table can be moved to the appendices. b. Figure 1 flow chart. Please specify in the first text box under search that these were electronic databases. c. The results of the quality assessment are not clearly presented in the manuscript. Response: Thank you for these helpful comments. We included an overview of the main study characteristics in S3 Appendix. This overview also indicates if a particular article reported on knowledge, or attitudes, or both, which was previously presented in Table 1. Table 1 was therefore removed from the manuscript. Figure 1 was amended as requested. We rephrased the paragraph on the quality assessment and highlighted the reference to S1 ERA, where the results of the quality assessment are presented. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267533.r002
31 Mar 2022 Decision Letter - Eleanor Ochodo, Editor PONE-D-21-27502R1Knowledge and attitudes of Implementation Support Practitioners - Findings from a systematic integrative reviewPLOS ONE Dear Leah Buhrmann, Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised by the academic editor. Please address the minor comments detailed in the Additional Editor Comments section below. Please submit your revised manuscript by 11th April 2022. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Eleanor Ochodo Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Thank you for satisfactorily addressing most of the previous reviewer comments. Please address the following minor comments: 1. In page 9, the authors state that " The researchers double-screened the titles, abstracts, and full-texts independently....." . However, this statement is only about study selection. Please also specifically state that data extraction/evaluation were done independently. The Prisma checklist in the appendix states that how risk of bias assessment (data evaluation in your case) was done is detailed in page 9. But that is not so. 2. Also please add in the Abstract methods section that quality assessment of included studies was done and with which tool. [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267533.r003
Revision 2
1 Apr 2022 Author Response Dear Eleanor Ochodo, We appreciate your comments and the opportunity to submit a revised version. Responses to your specific comments are detailed below. Additional Editor Comments: Thank you for satisfactorily addressing most of the previous reviewer comments. Please address the following minor comments: 1. In page 9, the authors state that " The researchers double-screened the titles, abstracts, and full-texts independently....." . However, this statement is only about study selection. Please also specifically state that data extraction/evaluation were done independently. The Prisma checklist in the appendix states that how risk of bias assessment (data evaluation in your case) was done is detailed in page 9. But that is not so. Response: Thank you for this comment. To clarify this section, we have moved the information on the screening procedure (“The researchers double-screened the titles, abstracts, and full-texts independently using the platform Covidence. Conflicts were solved by a third member of the team.”, p. 9, l. 189) to the section ‘Data Evaluation’, p. 11, l. 216/217. We added information on the data extraction, as requested, to this paragraph: “Data was extracted from the included studies by using a standardized data extraction form consisting of 19 items (i.e., study design and aim, method, geography, sector, setting, sampling strategy, sample size, clinical intervention, ISP information, outputs, and outcomes). Data from each included study was extracted by one research team member. The quality of the data extraction was assured by the lead author.” (p. 11, l. 217 - 222) The PRISMA Checklist (appendix 2) hast been updated accordingly. 2. Also please add in the Abstract methods section that quality assessment of included studies was done and with which tool. Response: Information regarding the quality assessment has been added as requested to the abstract (p. 2, l. 39 – 42): “Article screening was performed independently by two researchers, and data from included studies were extracted by a member of the research team and quality-assured by the lead researcher. The quality of included RCTs was assessed based on a framework by Hodder and colleagues.” Kind regards, Leah Bührmann Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267533.r004
11 Apr 2022 Decision Letter - Eleanor Ochodo, Editor Knowledge and attitudes of Implementation Support Practitioners - Findings from a systematic integrative review PONE-D-21-27502R2 Dear Leah Bührmann, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Eleanor Ochodo Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267533.r005
Formally Accepted
3 May 2022 Acceptance Letter - Eleanor Ochodo, Editor PONE-D-21-27502R2 Knowledge and Attitudes of Implementation Support Practitioners - Findings From a Systematic Integrative Review Dear Dr. Bührmann: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Prof Eleanor Ochodo Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267533.r006

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