Most of the evidence-based practice models a nursing capstone program teaches describe how to move a single project from a clinical question to a completed pilot. The ARCC Model asks a different question: once the pilot works, what keeps the change alive after the capstone ends and the student who ran it graduates.
Developed by nurse researcher Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk and colleagues, the Advancing Research and Clinical practice through close Collaboration (ARCC) Model treats sustainability as the point of the model, not an afterthought squeezed into a closing paragraph. Its central mechanism, a trained EBP mentor embedded in the unit, is built to outlast any single student's timeline.
This guide covers where the model came from, its core components, how to apply it step by step, and a full worked example built at capstone scale. For the wider landscape of change and EBP frameworks this model sits alongside, see our nursing theory and change frameworks hub. If your capstone's sustainability section specifically needs strengthening, our sustainability plan guide covers exactly what that section needs to include.
What Is the ARCC Model?
The ARCC Model, short for Advancing Research and Clinical practice through close Collaboration, was first articulated by nurse researcher Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk and developed further with colleague Ellen Fineout-Overholt across multiple editions of their widely used evidence-based practice textbook. Unlike models built mainly around one clinician's decision process, ARCC was designed from the start as an organizational model.
That organizational focus means the model assumes a unit or system wants evidence-based practice to become the ordinary way of working, not a one-time project that ends when a report gets submitted. It is built for settings where the goal is a lasting culture shift, which is exactly the framing most DNP-level sustainability requirements are asking for.
The model draws on cognitive behavior theory and control theory. Cognitive behavior theory supplies the core assumption that a clinician's beliefs about the value of evidence-based practice, and their confidence in their own ability to carry it out, shape how consistently they actually implement it. Control theory supplies the feedback loop: measure where staff and the unit currently stand, intervene, remeasure, and adjust.
What most distinguishes ARCC from other EBP models is its central mechanism, the EBP mentor. An EBP mentor is typically an advanced practice nurse or an experienced point-of-care clinician with both in-depth knowledge of the evidence-based practice process and the coaching skills to work through it with colleagues, one on one and in small groups, rather than lecturing about it once.
For a capstone or DNP project, this means your contribution is not only the specific practice change you implement. It is also the infrastructure, generally at least one named mentor role, that you leave behind to keep that change alive. That is exactly the gap a sustainability plan section is meant to answer, and ARCC gives you a named, citable framework for answering it.
The Core Components of the ARCC Model
Seven components make up a typical ARCC application, each building toward the same goal: a practice change staff actually keep doing after the project officially ends.
| Component | What it involves | Why it matters for sustainability |
|---|---|---|
| Organizational culture and readiness assessment | Evaluate the unit's current culture around evidence-based practice and name concrete barriers and facilitators before designing anything | Names the specific obstacles a sustainability plan has to design around, rather than guessing |
| EBP mentors | Identify or develop advanced practice or experienced staff with EBP knowledge and coaching skills | Provides an ongoing, present-tense resource that outlives the capstone timeline |
| Baseline beliefs and implementation measurement | Measure staff's confidence in and current use of evidence-based practice before the intervention | Gives you a defensible before-and-after comparison for your results chapter |
| Mentor-led coaching and skill building | Mentors work one on one and in small groups with point-of-care staff on the specific clinical question and change | Builds the change into staff capability, not just a policy document |
| Implementation with ongoing mentor support | Carry out the change with the mentor actively troubleshooting barriers as they surface | Keeps early setbacks from stalling the whole effort |
| Outcome and belief remeasurement | Remeasure EBP beliefs, implementation behavior, and relevant outcomes after the change | Closes the control-theory feedback loop and shows whether the change is taking hold |
| Institutionalizing the mentor infrastructure | Formalize the mentor role, or a rotating version of it, into the unit's ongoing staffing or professional development structure | This is the component that actually answers what happens after you graduate |
Notice that only the middle components involve implementing the change itself. The components on either side, the culture assessment before it and the institutionalized mentor role after it, are what separate ARCC from a model that stops the moment a pilot succeeds.
Applying the ARCC Model Step by Step
The six steps below turn ARCC's components into a sequence you can actually work through inside a capstone timeline.
Assess Organizational Culture and Readiness
Before proposing any change, assess the unit's current culture around evidence-based practice and identify the specific barriers and facilitators staff report, rather than assuming you already know them. A structured organizational culture and readiness instrument works well here, but a short staff survey plus informal conversations with charge nurses can surface the same barriers at a smaller scale.
Identify or Serve as the EBP Mentor
Name who will fill the EBP mentor role, an advanced practice nurse, a clinical nurse specialist, or an experienced staff nurse with EBP training and strong interpersonal skills. On many capstone projects the student fills this role personally during the project window, which makes naming a successor for after graduation an essential part of the plan, not an optional extra.
Establish Baseline EBP Beliefs and Implementation
Measure staff's confidence in evidence-based practice and how often they currently use it before you intervene. A short self-report scale covering EBP beliefs and EBP implementation gives you the specific before numbers your results chapter will need to show the change worked.
Coach Point-of-Care Staff Through the Change
Work with staff individually and in small groups on the specific clinical question and the chosen change, answering questions, modeling the new behavior, and troubleshooting resistance as it surfaces rather than waiting for a scheduled check-in.
Implement the Change With Mentor Support
Roll out the practice change with the mentor actively present on the unit, not managing it from a distance. Early barriers, a workflow step that does not fit a particular shift pattern, confusion about documentation, are far easier to fix in the first two weeks than after staff have already built a workaround habit.
Remeasure and Institutionalize
Remeasure EBP beliefs, implementation behavior, and the relevant outcome after the change has had time to settle, and formally build the mentor role into the unit's ongoing staffing or professional development structure. This is the step that actually answers what happens after your capstone ends.
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Get DNP practice improvement help →Why Choose the ARCC Model for Your Capstone
Reach for ARCC specifically when your program or committee cares about organizational infrastructure and long-term sustainability, not only a single pilot's outcome numbers. It is a strong fit when your setting already has, or is building, an EBP mentor program, since the model gives you language and a named theory base for describing that structure.
It also fits well when your project needs a named theoretical grounding beyond a procedural checklist. Cognitive behavior theory and control theory give you a citable rationale for why measuring beliefs before and after your intervention matters, not just what the change itself was.
If your project's real story is establishing, with hard data, that a problem exists in the first place, a model built specifically for that first step, like Rosswurm and Larrabee's, will likely carry more of that weight. Many strong DNP projects pair ARCC's mentor and sustainability framing with a more procedural model, such as the Iowa Model or the Johns Hopkins EBP Model, for the earlier evidence-appraisal steps.
Why the ARCC Model Is Built Around Sustainability
Most EBP models describe implementation and effectively stop there, leaving the reader to assume the change simply continues on its own. ARCC treats that assumption as the actual problem to solve, which is why sustainability sits inside the model itself rather than as a separate closing thought.
Three design choices do the real work. First, the mentor role is named by title, not by person, so it survives staff turnover, including the student's own departure. Second, the belief and implementation measures are meant to be repeatable, so a unit can check on progress using tools already built into its quality infrastructure rather than a one-time capstone survey. Third, institutionalizing the mentor role usually means folding it into an existing structure, a charge-nurse rotation, a shared-governance council, a clinical ladder tier, rather than inventing a brand-new position with no budget line that quietly disappears.
This is also where ARCC connects most directly to the sustainability section every capstone or DNP project needs. Our dedicated sustainability plan guide walks through exactly what faculty expect to see in that section. ARCC gives you the theoretical backing, the specific mechanism (the mentor), and the specific evidence (repeated belief and implementation measurement) to fill it in with more than good intentions.
A Worked Example: Sustaining an Evidence-Based Fall-Prevention Bundle
To make the model concrete, here is how ARCC plays out on a realistic capstone-style topic: sustaining a fall-prevention bundle on a medical-surgical unit after an initial rollout.
Assess Organizational Culture and Readiness. A short staff survey and conversations with charge nurses find that most nurses believe in the value of the fall-prevention bundle but feel unprepared to adapt it for patients on multiple mobility-affecting medications. High shift turnover and reliance on float staff during peak census are named as the biggest barriers, since the bundle depends on consistent handoff communication.
Identify the EBP Mentor. The DNP student serves as the mentor during the project itself, but the plan names the unit's assistant nurse manager, who is completing an EBP certificate program, as the mentor's successor once the student graduates.
Establish Baseline Beliefs and Implementation. A brief EBP beliefs and implementation survey shows staff confidence in adapting the bundle scoring notably lower than their confidence in the bundle's general value, confirming the specific skill gap the culture assessment already suggested.
Coach Point-of-Care Staff. Over six weeks, the mentor runs short huddle-based coaching sessions twice weekly, focused specifically on adapting the bundle for patients on sedatives, diuretics, or multiple mobility-affecting medications, and shadows two shifts per week to answer real-time questions.
Implement With Mentor Support. The updated bundle rolls out unit-wide with the mentor present for the first two weeks of each shift rotation. A workflow gap surfaces almost immediately: float staff are not receiving the adapted bundle's quick-reference card during orientation, and the mentor fixes it within days by adding the card to the float staff packet.
Remeasure and Institutionalize. At twelve weeks, the unit's fall rate for high-risk patients has dropped meaningfully compared with the pre-rollout baseline, and the belief and implementation survey shows a corresponding jump in staff confidence adapting the bundle. The coaching structure is folded into the assistant nurse manager's existing shared-governance responsibilities, with a quarterly audit built into the unit's existing fall-prevention quality dashboard rather than a new, separate report.
Notice that the sustainability piece is not a single sentence at the end. It is a named person, a named review cadence, and a named place in an existing reporting structure, exactly what ARCC's institutionalization component asks for.
The ARCC Model vs. Other EBP and Change Frameworks
| Model | How it differs from ARCC |
|---|---|
| Iowa Model | Gives a detailed decision-point flow from trigger to adoption, but does not name a dedicated mentor role or a specific pre- and post-belief measurement plan. See our full Iowa Model guide. |
| PARIHS / i-PARIHS | Shares ARCC's emphasis on organizational context and facilitation, but frames facilitation more broadly rather than through a formally trained mentor position. See our full PARIHS and i-PARIHS guide. |
| Rosswurm and Larrabee's Model | Front-loads formally establishing that a problem exists using internal and external data; ARCC assumes that groundwork and concentrates instead on the mentor infrastructure that keeps a chosen change alive. See our full Rosswurm and Larrabee guide. |
| Johns Hopkins EBP Model | Supplies a detailed evidence-rating scale for the appraisal phase, an area ARCC treats more lightly in favor of its sustainability infrastructure. See our full Johns Hopkins EBP Model guide. |
If a committee member asks why you chose ARCC over an alternative, a grounded answer usually points to the mentor role and the repeated belief and implementation measurement, the two elements built specifically to answer what happens to this change after your project ends, where most peer models stay largely silent.
Where This Model Fits in Your Capstone Document
| Capstone chapter | ARCC component it corresponds to |
|---|---|
| Introduction / Problem Statement | Brief mention of the unit's current EBP culture as context for the problem |
| Theoretical/Conceptual Framework | Full explanation of the ARCC Model, its cognitive behavior theory and control theory grounding |
| Methodology | Culture and readiness assessment, mentor selection, and the baseline beliefs and implementation measurement plan |
| Implementation | Mentor-led coaching cycles and how barriers were addressed as they surfaced |
| Results / Discussion | Pre- and post-intervention beliefs, implementation, and outcome data |
| Sustainability / Dissemination | Institutionalized mentor role, its home in an existing structure, and the ongoing measurement cadence |
See our nursing theory and change frameworks hub for how this model compares with the other implementation and change frameworks covered across this cluster.
Common Mistakes When Applying This Model
- Treating "EBP mentor" as a one-time volunteer rather than naming who specifically fills that role after the student leaves
- Skipping the organizational culture and readiness assessment and guessing at barriers instead
- Measuring EBP beliefs once but never remeasuring them, missing the control-theory feedback loop that gives ARCC its evidence
- Writing a sustainability section that quietly depends on the student personally continuing to monitor the unit after graduation
- Using the ARCC label without actually building in mentor-led coaching, describing the model instead of applying it
- Ignoring staffing and turnover realities when designing the mentor infrastructure, so the plan collapses with the first staff departure
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Our nursing writers can take your unit's culture, your chosen practice change, and your available mentor resources, and write a fully applied ARCC section, mapped step by step to your specific BSN, MSN, or DNP project.
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Frequently Asked Questions
ARCC stands for Advancing Research and Clinical practice through close Collaboration. Where most EBP models focus on moving a project from a clinical question through implementation, ARCC is built specifically around what keeps the change alive afterward, through a trained EBP mentor role, repeated measurement of staff beliefs and implementation, and formally institutionalizing that structure into the unit's ongoing operations.
An EBP mentor is typically an advanced practice nurse, clinical nurse specialist, or experienced point-of-care clinician who combines in-depth knowledge of the evidence-based practice process with the interpersonal and change-facilitation skills to coach colleagues through it directly. Mentors work one on one and in small groups with staff, modeling the new behavior and troubleshooting resistance, rather than delivering a single training session and stepping back.
ARCC applications typically pair an organizational culture and readiness instrument, used early to identify barriers and facilitators, with companion self-report scales measuring staff beliefs about evidence-based practice and how often staff actually implement it. Measuring both before and after the intervention is what gives you a defensible before-and-after comparison for your results chapter, rather than a single post-implementation snapshot.
It works at any level, scoped to what is realistic for your timeline. A BSN or MSN capstone can apply ARCC at a single-unit scale, naming one mentor and one measurement cycle, while a DNP project is generally expected to carry the institutionalization step further, formally folding the mentor role into an existing staffing or governance structure with a defined ongoing review cadence.
Control theory supplies the feedback-loop logic behind measuring twice: assess where staff and the unit stand before you intervene, implement the change, then remeasure the same beliefs, implementation behavior, and outcomes afterward. In a capstone write-up, this shows up directly as your pre- and post-intervention data, and as the plan for who keeps checking those same measures after your project formally ends.
Yes, and it is a common, defensible pairing. A model built around establishing that a problem exists, such as Rosswurm and Larrabee's, or a more procedural evidence-appraisal model, such as the Iowa Model or the Johns Hopkins EBP Model, can supply the earlier steps, while ARCC supplies the mentor infrastructure and sustainability framing for what happens after the evidence is applied.
Three things: a mentor role named by title rather than by person, so it survives staff turnover; a measurement plan that reuses tools already built into the unit's existing quality infrastructure rather than a one-time capstone survey; and institutionalization into an existing structure, such as a charge-nurse rotation or shared-governance council, rather than a new position with no budget line that quietly disappears.
Yes. Our nursing writers can take your unit's culture assessment, the practice change you have chosen, and your available mentor resources, and write a fully applied ARCC section, covering the culture and readiness assessment, the mentor and measurement plan, and the institutionalization step your sustainability section needs.