Introduction
Nurses play a significant role in the identification of the health issues that determine the accuracy of patient care due to their position and relation to patients. They may influence the health care processes as they are closely related to patients and understand their needs and issues. Nurses are responsible to gather, analyze, detect the most accurate information, and participate in the evidence-based practices to ensure the delivery of the best patient care.
Basic Obligations
Nurses are obliged to discover and use new information to provide the highest quality of patient care. They offer new approaches and innovative design programs on health issues that improve their practice. Such methods can be met by integrating research and evidence-based knowledge about biological, behavioral, and environmental influences (Haber, 2017). The integration of the research and evidence contribute to a better understanding of the processes related to patient care.
Expectations
However, the role of the nurse goes beyond the understanding of the evidence-based practices and participation in it. Dang and Dearholt (2017) emphasize that health care providers should not only participate in evidence-based practice process but also be responsible for promoting the culture that supports the use of such practices. This means that nurses are responsible for ensuring that resources are at the place to facilitate the process. Evidence-based practice improves their performance and allows them to perform more efficiently as it supports rational decision-making and reduces inappropriate variations in practice. Nurses can reach involvement by participating in professional conferences, EBP projects, and expand their knowledge by reading and analyzing information.
Generating Questions for the Practice
Evidence-based practice does not imply research; however, it requires collecting, integrating, and evaluating the evidence presented in the research. It is important to understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative questions to generate evidence-based practice questions. Qualitative questions discover meaning and aim to realize a phenomenon described. Therefore, a person conducting inquiries should focus on individuals, a population’s experience, or particular situation. Quantitative questions compare individuals or groups based on various outcomes to discover relationships between causes and effects.
Background questions also take place to provide foundational information as they can cover terminology, patient resources, or general information. Quantitative questions can be formatted with the help of the PICO(T) model that allows answering many different types of questions (“Resources for evidence-based practice,” 2019). P stands for population, I for intervention, C for the comparator, O for an outcome. The time frame can be used to determine the time it takes to indicate an outcome.
Current State
However, not all the nurses find their knowledge sufficient enough to use in the evidence-based practice. Saunders and Vehviläinen-Julkunen (2016) conducted research to determine the readiness of nurses in best-evidence practices. They discovered that most of the nurses understood the importance of the implementation of such methods for the improvement of care quality and patient outcomes. However, they do not have enough individual practice and readiness to implement and participate in such a practice. Therefore, further research is required, and the issue needs to be addressed to teach nurses to integrate evidence-based practice into clinical decision-making.
Therefore, the role of nurses is vital in the implementation of an evidence-based process as they lead the process and may develop the best practice to meet their own and patient needs. However, it is essential to generate accurate questions and have the required set of skills to manage the evidence-based processes and integrate them into the nurse’s practice. Knowledge and experience can contribute to the development of best evidence-based practices.
References
Clark, C. M. (2017). An evidence-based approach to integrate civility, professionalism, and ethical practice into nursing curricula. Nurse Educator, 42(3), 120-126.
Dang, D., & Dearholt, S. L. (2017). Johns Hopkins nursing evidence-based practice: Model and guidelines (3rd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.
Resources for evidence-based practice: Forming questions. (2019). Web.
Saunders, H., & Vehviläinen-Julkunen, K. (2016). The state of readiness for evidence-based practice among nurses: An integrative review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 56, 128-140.