Several valuable processes and principles should serve as a basis for modern healthcare practices to improve patient outcomes and enhance the nation’s health. Evidence-based practice (EBP) is one of the key processes that every medical worker should be engaged in. It is extremely important to create a culture that values and rewards EBP in advanced nursing (Center for Nursing Inquiry, n.d.). The primary reasons are that EBP allows to reduce the rates of medical errors, make more informed decisions, and ensure that high-quality services are provided at minimum cost.
Overall, EBP in healthcare means searching for, using, and analyzing the latest and most credible scientific knowledge and clinical experience in order to make decisions related to patients. A culture that promotes EBP involves active and effective efforts to explain the importance of EBP in the first place, encourage advanced nurses to consider evidence, and teach medical workers to collect and incorporate credible information (Yoo et al., 2019). Noticeably, according to Sharplin et al. (2019), “nurses and midwives are central to the implementation and delivery of quality care through evidence-based practice (EBP),” primarily because they have more contact with patients and can better understand their physical and mental needs and states (p. 1). Therefore, it means that this practice should be promoted among advanced nurses in the first place. The benefits of creating and maintaining such a culture are listed above.
First of all, if nurses pay more attention to exploring the available studies and prior clinical experience, it is more likely that they will avoid severe errors during decision-making. Combined with their understanding of a patient’s needs and preferences, credible evidence that the nurse finds and uses can enhance the outcomes for this particular patient (Yoo et al., 2019). Second, EBP leads to the minimization of costs because advanced nurses can avoid using unnecessary procedures or replace more expensive ones with cost-saving alternatives (Center for Nursing Inquiry, n.d.). At the same time, incorporated research also allows one to make sure that services provided are of high quality and can lead to the desired outcomes.
Unfortunately, creating such a culture among nurses is a challenging task. It is possible to begin by changing the mindset of advanced nurses and instilling new values and norms in them. Thus, as indicated by Marshall (n.d.), EBP culture can exist and be maintained only when nurses move away from rituals and begin questioning their actions, even if the latter is approved and recommended by the facility’s guidelines. In other words, EBP can be effective only when critical thinking is promoted among medical workers (Marshall, n.d.). Asking questions and evaluating one’s nursing practice is the key.
There are several specific steps that a healthcare organization can take to create a culture that values and promotes EBP. First, advanced nurses should be provided with access to toolkits and relevant research that they can easily consult (Marshall, n.d.). Second, it is of critical importance to develop a special rewards system, informing the nurses that they can get bonuses and recognition if they apply EBP in their everyday clinical practice. Third, for them to do that successfully, healthcare organizations should offer effective training programs to develop the required skills in nurses (Sharplin et al., 2019). Eventually, the final step is to establish clear and accessible EBP objectives and goals so that they are instilled in the culture.
References
Center for Nursing Inquiry. (n.d.). Evidence-based practice. Johns Hopkins Medicine. Web.
Marshall, L. (n.d.). Creating a culture of evidence-based nursing practice – why and how [PDF document]. Web.
Sharplin, G., Adelson, P., Kennedy, K., Williams, N., Hewlett, R., Wood, J., Bonner, R., Dabars, E., & Eckert, M. (2019). Establishing and sustaining a culture of evidence-based practice: An evaluation of barriers and facilitators to implementing the best practice spotlight organization program in the Australian healthcare context. Healthcare, 7(4), 142-157. Web.
Yoo, J. Y., Kim, J. H., Kim, J. S., Kim, H. L., & Ki, J. S. (2019). Clinical nurses’ beliefs, knowledge, organizational readiness and level of implementation of evidence-based practice: The first step to creating an evidence-based practice culture. PloS one, 14(12), 1-15. Web.