Question

For this discussion you are asked to reflect on the following statement:

"One must chose either evidence-based practice, or patient centered care. You can't do both."

On the surface, this might seem like a simple question. However, as you read through this module's assigned readings you will see it is not so black and white. What happens when evidence conflicts with patient preference and values? Which one wins? Can you have both?

Your initial response should be between 200 and 300 words and meet the requirements of the discussion rubric. Be sure to provide personal examples, evidence for support, and new insight.

Answer 1

Evidence based practice versus patient centered care.

Both the aspects are very important in patient care . It seems very nice to see in the books when it's written that we must provide evidence based, patient centered care , but when we talk about the world scenario ,or when it comes across a situation in ward /bedside then the actual care provided is either evidence based or patient centered due to various reasons.

Practically, it's not possible to provide an evidence based and patient centered care in the ward where you are assigned 4 to 5 patients and you have only 8 hours to do the duty in which you have to provide care , do the documentation ,do the procedure ,have to attend the rounds , give the over to the next shift staff, and in some cases if any of the patient gets sick then you have to take additional care .

So, when the nurses provide care to the patient what they generally do is provide care to the mentioned complaints in a way which is being followed from the ancient time , they don't try to put any new initiative or new technique/efforts in the practical field until unless there is any compulsion. One of the chief reasons behind this is less time , and some times less facility of resources and appliances. Staff members have the desire to inculcate the new technologies and other initiatives in the care ,but they are locked up due to the inappropriate patient nurse ration which makes them to work as a preset computers or robots .

According to me ,the chief in charges must take an initiative to inculcate new evidence based practice in the work field and motivate staffs to utilize them with the help proper facility of resources and a good nurse patient ratio . It's just useless to conduct researches if we don't apply the results in the work field .

I will share my own experience when I was working in ICU in fortis , I got 4 patients in a row out of which 2 were on ventilator support , 1 was a psychiatric patient and the rest 1 was as stable patient to be shifted to ward. Frankly speaking I was just doing my duty to finish of it because I was just providing care according to the complaints of the patient's , because there was no time ,as two were on ventilator support hitting and bitting the tubing's of ventilator ,one was just jumping out of bed and the last one I have to shift to the ward so, I went to ward to shift the patient. Proper distribution of patients is very necessary to provide care to the patient's and an initiative to use new aspects in the field.