NR439 Week 8 Discussion – Where Do You Go From Here

One Barrier that I feel hinders nurses from engaging in evidence-based practice is an inappropriate organizational culture. According to Alatawi et al. (2020), if a healthcare facility’s organizational culture does not support the utilization of EBP in clinical practices, efforts to integrate EBP will fail. Inappropriate culture is demonstrated by the failure of nurse leaders and organization executives to demand that nurses engage in best practices, failure to provide nurses with the necessary resources to analyze available research, and failure to provide nurses with opportunities to advance their knowledge and skills on evidence-based practice. A strategy that I think can facilitate the adoption of evidence to enhance the quality of nursing care is the involvement of top management as important stakeholders and champions of EBP. The management role is not only to provide the necessary resources to help nurses engage in EBP but also to communicate the message that the organization values EBP practices and desires that its clinicians base their operations on the most recent evidence-based practices. This helps develop an organizational culture where EBP is valued and supported.

My thinking about nursing research and EBP has changed in that I now appreciate the value of EBP in advancing the nursing profession. I understand that although practical nursing skills learned in college and experience gained in clinical practice are essential components of nursing, EBP is essential in ensuring such experience and skills are relevant to practice. The healthcare environment is changing; as people gain more knowledge, they learn better ways to conduct things. For example, research has helped establish that washing hands in-between attending patients can help reduce hospital-acquired infections. Without research, nurses would still today be infecting their patients with various illnesses unknowingly (Amit-Aharon et al., 2020). One learning from this course is that engaging in EBP means that a nurse must be willing to engage in continuous learning. New evidence can arise at any time; to remain up-to-date with the latest EBP, a nurse must be willing and committed to continuous learning.

References

Alatawi, M., Aljuhani, E., Alsufiany, F., Aleid, K., Rawah, R., Aljanabi, S., & Banakhar, M. (2020). Barriers of implementing evidence-based practice in the nursing profession: A literature review. American Journal of Nursing Science, 9(1), https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajns.20200901.16

Amit-Aharon, A., Melnikov, S., & Warshawski, S. (2020). The effect of evidence-based practice perception, information literacy self-efficacy, and academic motivation of nursing students’ future implementation of evidence-based practice. Journal of Professional Nursing, 36(6), 497-502. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2020.04.001