An analysis of the professional responsibility of a nurse to promote the use of evidence-based nursing practice through effective leadership and m...

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A nurse is required to be responsible and accountable, updating their knowledge and skills continually by using professional development (NMC, 2008). This requires an understanding and awareness of what Evidence Based Practice (EBP) is. Nurses make decisions about their practice using EBP. Ways in which this can be utilized in the improvement of knowledge and practice is, for example; using established sources of evidence. (Marquis et al, 2012). Nursing practice uses a range of approaches to improve and develop patient care so as a nurse the skill of evaluating sources of evidence is necessary to do this effectively. Evidence is gathered through research. EBP consists of research, data collection and nursing research. When searching for evidence to improve your practice the range of information available is vast. A distinction must be made between evidence that is reliable under scrutiny and evidence which is unreliable. Fitzpatrick (2007) asserts that, to understand evidence based practice is to understand where to look and what credible sources of evidence are. Sources that are credible include information published by a government body or academic institution. Fitzpatrick (2007) recommends identifying key aspects of information of the source to ascertain its credibility, for example; who is the author and where did the research come from? Is the article true or false and how long has it been there? (Fitzpatrick, 2007). A journal article is scrutinised by peers and editors and publishers, whereas in contrast a piece of information on a general website could be published by any person and make any claim and may not pass scrutiny under a peer review. Databases like EBSCO for example have articles that are peer reviewed.
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