evidence-based nursing practice

Leandra Chavez

If I were describing evidence-based nursing practice to friends or family members, I would start by explaining what we do as nurses, our roles, and responsibilities. Evidence based practice is researching and finding the most current knowledge and evidence to improve what we do for our patients and to improve their outcomes. The evidence is found through research from clinical experts and information provided from the patients. I always say I want to provide the best quality of care to my patients; evidence-based practice can help us provide that kind of care.

There are many kinds of evidence, in our book Schmidt explains, Although it would be nice to claim that all nursing practice is based on substantial and reliable evidence, this is not the case. Evidence derived from tradition, authority, trial and error, personal experiences, intuition, borrowed evidence, and scientific research are all used to guide nursing practice (Schmidt, N. 2014). I believe that 100% of all nursing practice did come from at least one type of evidence. I think about 80-90% of the nursing practice has EBP to support it, yes, a lot of our practices came from tradition and personal experience but there are places that people document their findings and share with everyone. If you search for something that we do in nursing, there is a very good chance you will find many articles about it.

One would think that when there is compelling scientific evidence, findings would quickly and efficiently transition to practice. However, most often this is not the case. Many barriers complicate the integration of findings into practice. In fact, it can take as many as 200 years for an innovation to become a standard of care (Schmidt, N. 2014). It takes so long for something new that has scientific evidence to become part of our standard practice, that is why it takes a long time to see different changes. We do not make changes until there is evidence that, what we change, can positively help our patients

After reading how long it took for internet, automobiles, and Televisions to diffuse and spread through a quarter of the population, I was amazed. I started working at Presbyterian Hospital 3 years ago and about 6 months in, I was introduced to this device called a PureWick. I googled how long ago a PureWick was invented! It was invented in 1982, and we just started using them about 2 years ago! I know that some techs hate them and some of us love them but aside from that is took 37 years for us to see this invention. I think that the main reason it takes so long is because we were seeing how other patients were liking it and to see if it really helped.   

There are 2 reasons that some nurses do not continue researching when on the job. They have their own individual experiences that they trust, the organization does not have the resources to research, or the organization has a specific way they want you to do everything. One of the main reasons nursing practice is not all based on evidence is because not a lot of people knew about EBP a few years ago, that is changing, but it was not something that was required to be taught back in the day.  Other reasons are, lack of time to research, lack of value of research based on practice, lack of technology skills, lack of resources to evidence, lack of understanding research, and not wanting to change.