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Nursing Resources: Evidence-Based Practice

Use this LibGuide to help with your research at any point on your journey!

What is Evidence-Based Practice and why is it important in your research?

From the American Nursing Association:

"Evidence-based practice in nursing involves providing holistic, quality care based on the most up-to-date research and knowledge rather than traditional methods, advice from colleagues, or personal beliefs. 

Nurses can expand their knowledge and improve their clinical practice experience by collecting, processing, and implementing research findings. Evidence-based practice focuses on what's at the heart of nursing — your patient."

When researching, we need to remember to take into consideration facts, and credibility of what we're reading, and who wrote it. EBP adds an extra layer that allows you to find real-life data that has been implemented in the medical world for patient outcomes. This is critical in research because it knowledge has been shared among the community as to what worked, what didn't and why. While researching, take into account if EBP was used when writing the article, or are these scenario-based theories supported by data. 

A step-by-step guide for researching with EBP

Taken from the American Journal of Nursing, Evidence-Based Practice: Step by Step: The Seven Steps of Evidence-Based Practice here is a summary of using EBP in your research. 

Step Zero: Cultivate a spirit of inquiry.

  • What is your question/topic?

Step 1: Ask clinical questions (use the PICOT format if needed) 

  • Look at different ideas and compare things to one another if needed. Their example in PICOT format does just that: "In acute care hospitals (patient population), how does having a rapid response team (intervention) compared with not having a response team (comparison) affect the number of cardiac arrests (outcome) during a three-month period (time)?"

Step 2: Search for the best evidence.

  • Use proper search terms from your brainstorming/mind mapping to help you navigate the waters of searching in the databases.

Step 3: Critically appraise the evidence; use the evidence hierarchy to understand different research levels. 

  • Ask yourself important questions as you read the research to see if there is EBP in the article, or if they are only giving numbers and hypotheticals. An example from the article is: Are the results of the study valid? This question of study validity centers on whether the research methods are rigorous enough to render findings as close to the truth as possible. For example, did the researchers randomly assign subjects to treatment or control groups and ensure that they shared key characteristics prior to treatment? Were valid and reliable instruments used to measure key outcomes?

Step 4: Integrate the evidence with clinical expertise and patient preferences and values. 

  • Echoing step 3, make sure they are using real examples to support their research in an EBP manner. "Clinical expertise, based on patient assessments, laboratory data, and data from outcomes management programs, as well as patients' preferences and values are important components of EBP."

Step 5: Evaluate the outcomes of the practice decisions or changes based on evidence.

  • Analyze the pros and cons of the outcome, and make decisions based on the evidence. 

Step 6: Disseminate EBP results. 

  • What is the outcome and how does it support your topic? Is the information helpful to you as a researcher to use in your research?