Evidence Based Practice In Nursing

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Evidence Based Practice in Nursing Over the last 10 years evidence-based practice (EBP) has grown substantially and is changing the nursing care delivered to patients along with the nursing work environment. Nurses are more involved in the decision making process, and are making clinical decisions with better patient outcomes (Good, Fink, Krugman, Oman, & Traditi, 2011). With technology growing at such a fast pace, new and more effective medicines, medical devices, and procedures are developed daily. Digestible sensors that monitor your bodily systems and 3D printing of embryonic stem cells, blood vessels, and sheets of cardiac tissue that actually beat like a real heart, are significantly impacting the future of healthcare (Honigman, …show more content…

EBP incorporates an organized search for the best up to date empirical research, with clinical expertise, to answer a focused clinical question concerning a patient or a quality improvement issue in the clinical environment. The focused question addresses the patient population, area of interest, comparison intervention or control group, and desired outcome (PICO). Using this question style saves the nurse time and will yield the best available relevant evidence. The process of EBP has several models with common elements that start from uncertainty in the clinical setting, and lead to making an informed decision by assessing and implementing the latest research evidence into practice (Stevens, 2013). Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt (2010) define the seven step process of EBP as: 1. Cultivating the spirit of inquiry, 2. Asking the question in PICO …show more content…

230) in EBP. Clinical opinion, together with the best relevant research evidence, provides the framework to for the best patient outcome. The nurse’s clinical opinion is acquired through knowledge and skills developed from undergraduate, graduate, or continuing education, clinical experience, and clinical practice (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2010). Clinical opinion also includes internal evidence, which is generated within a clinical setting from quality improvement outcomes, management initiatives or EBP implementation projects (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2010). Nurses use their clinical opinion when they identify each patient’s condition, individual risks, personal values and expectations, benefits of possible interventions, and gather evidence for EBP. When searching for the best available evidence, there is a hierarchy in the strength of evidence. The highest level of evidence usually comes from a systematic review or an evidence-based clinical practice guideline based on a systematic review. Systematic reviews provide the strongest evidence through a summary combining the results from many relevant, unbiased studies, to answer a particular clinical question. Nurses critically assess the individual studies, to gather the best evidence available for patient care. Systematic

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