Evidence-based practice. Those three words seem to be all the buzz in health care in recent years, and there is a good reason why. Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the science of our nursing care: It keeps us current, up-to-date, and providing the best care to our patients for the best reasons.
When you break EBP down to its core, it’s an approach to making decisions and providing nursing care not just on the most current research, but also on the basis of personal clinical experience. It’s the why for your nursing care, validating your decision-making for certain tasks on the basis of outcomes and research. It incorporates the most relevant studies, literature reviews, and clinical cases, but it also emphasizes observations made in your own care over the tenure of your own practice. It aims to incorporate what you and others have found to be the most effective treatments, practices, and ideas. EBP improves patient outcomes and patient safety.
How can you bring EBP to your unit?
Use the Internet
It can be as simple as a Google Scholar search, checking Up-to-Date, or reviewing some of the recent articles from your nursing specialty’s society journal. Changes are easy to implement on the unit, whether you’re a staff nurse or a manager. Do you feel that shift report is rushed or could be improved for better patient safety? Take a look at what the literature says about the topic and what the evidence supports to increase patient satisfaction, outcomes, and safety. It’s often surprising just how much information is already published on a topic you may be interested it. Would your unit benefit from a subscription to the Annual Review of Nursing Research, the Journal of Perinatal Education, or Neonatal Network? Ask your manager to subscribe, or whether your hospital system can provide physical copies for unit reference.
Start a Unit Council
Evidence-based practice is best incorporated into nursing units with a dedicated safety nurse, educator, or EBP leader. In units without such a position, clinical practice councils can be formed by any nurse on a unit to bring together a core team of individuals to tackle unit-based issues and find literature-supported solutions. It is difficult to imagine a unit leader or manager who wouldn’t welcome this type of employee engagement in both patient safety and unit success.
Think Small
It is easy to be discouraged when one considers the breadth of nursing research about a given topic. But the root of evidence-based care is in the real-world, at the bedside, and on the unit. It starts with the observation of a problem, and the drive to find the best way to fix it. You don’t have to fix the problems plaguing nursing as a profession; you are just aiming to fix issues on your own unit and in your own practice.
PICO
The PICO model can help you define a clinical question you’re attempting to address. It stands for problem, intervention, comparison, and outcome. Well-built questions identify all four components when reviewing the literature on a certain topic. It can help format your study, research, and plan of attack.
Involve New Graduate Nurses
Oftentimes, the nurses most familiar with research and clinical questions are the new graduates. New graduates today are given the tools to conduct EBP research, and have been taught the most cutting-edge and up-to-date recommendations for practice available.
