An Evidence-Based Practice Scholars Program: One Institution’s Journey Toward Excellence

Abstract

The concept of evidence-based practice (EBP) has continued to evolve in the nursing profession as the basis for clinical decision-making. Despite the evidence to support this practice, few nurses at the bedside have received instruction in how to develop a clinical practice question using EBP skills. The EBP Scholars Program was designed at a Midwest pediatric academic hospital to teach EBP skills to enable staff to conduct extensive evaluations of existing literature to improve pediatric patient care. The program provides a comprehensive overview of EBP and the essential components necessary for implementation of EBP in a clinical setting. The development and implementation of an innovative EBP program designed to empower nurses to improve patient outcomes, as well as the lessons learned, are described.

Do educational interventions aimed at nurses to support the implementation of evidence-based practice improve patient outcomes? A systematic review

“…Eighteen studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the systematic review, including 12 quantitative articles (Bruheim, Woods, Smeland, & Nortvedt, 2014;Crabtree et al, 2016;Cullen, Titler, & Rempel, 2011;Gawlinski & Becker, 2012;Green et al, 2014;Hockenberry, Brown, Walden, & Barrera, 2009;Jack, Roberts, & Wilson, 2003;Sciarra, 2011;Selig & Lewanowicz, 2008;Steurer, 2010;Weeks, Moore, & Allender, 2011;Wells, Free, & Adams, 2007), three qualitative studies (Balakas et al, 2013;Christenbery, Williamson, Sandlin, & Wells, 2016;Milne et al, 2007), and three mixed-methods study designs (Connor et al, 2016;Cullen & Titler, 2004;Friesen, Brady, Milligan, & Christensen, 2017). Descriptions of these studies are presented in Table S2.…”

“…Some papers reported specific patient outcomes for a range of clinical areas. These improvements included positive changes in pain management (Green et al, 2014;Hockenberry et al, 2009;Wells et al, 2007), the rates of urinary catheter utilisation (Green et al, 2014), the rates of pressure ulcers (Green et al, 2014), the length of stay in hospital (Cullen & Titler, 2004;Green et al, 2014;Milne et al, 2007), the number of calls to the outpatient orthopaedic clinic (Green et al, 2014), the infection rate of dialysis catheters (Steurer, 2010), the rates of infections in relation to central line in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patients (Balakas et al, 2013), cost (Cullen & Titler, 2004), anxiety of patients (Cullen & Titler, 2004), the rates of aspiration pneumonia (Crabtree et al, 2016), and the rates of ventilator-associated pneumonia (Wells et al, 2007). For example, in Cullen and Titler's (2004) study, one of the projects implemented an EBP-based sedation protocol in the Medical Intensive Care Unit, which resulted in decreasing costs by $450,000 and the length of stay in the first year after implementation.…”

Nurse Managers' Perceived Knowledge and Skills Regarding Evidence-Based Nursing Practice

“…Furthermore, contrary to the present results, Ali (2014) showed over-rating of the nurses' skills in using information and activities related to EBP. From the investigators' point of view, this contradiction could be explained that it should be other measuring methods for evaluating nurses' skills which also emphasized by Steurer (2010) who claimed that there is minimal nursing literature on how to best teach and evaluate skills required for EBP. Frequency of applying EBP activities: According to the current study findings, the frequency of the nurse managers involvement in implementing EBP process were low (48.56%).…”

Interprofessional Evidence-Based Clinical Scholar Program: Learning to Work Together

“…Likewise, Brown et al (2010) determined that attitudinal and knowledge barriers to research only partially explained nurses' difficulty in implementing EBP and that system inertia created more barriers. Nursing clinical scholar programs (Hockenberry, Brown, Walden, & Barrera, 2009) in acute care require nurses to attend an EBP course (Brewer & Schultz, 2010) and to engage in an EBP project (Steurer, 2010) under the guidance of a mentor (Mariano et al, 2009).…”