Participating in a multisite study exploring operational failures encountered by frontline nurses: lessons learned.

Multisite collaboratives can yield data and improvement lessons for participants. In this commentary, the authors describe challenges experienced in a collaborative that examined nursing errors. Barriers to reaching the hospital's expectations of collaborative involvement included lack of a robust research design and ineffective communication management by the study's coordinating center. They suggest that nurse executives interested in participating in a collaborative study review the related evidence to determine the appropriateness of the collaborative for their organization.