Question

You are a staff nurse working on a cardiac step-down unit. Many of your colleagues do not understand evidence based practice. How would you help them to understand the relevance of evidence based practice to providing optimal care to this patient population? What barriers do you see to applying evidence based practice in this clinical situation? How might you overcome these barriers? Post your response to this discussion forum and respond to at least on other student.

Answer 1

Most nurses are action oriented, preferring to learn by looking, listening and talking. It mag seem easier to seek information from colleagues, rely on past experience, draw on knowledge of pathophysiology and read whatever references are closest at hand. However, in the clinical setting, the closest references may not contain the most current information or the best possible evidence,. Computers at the worksite help overcome this barrier to evidence based practice by providing fast, easy access to current practice information from around the world. One barrier to evidence based nursing practice is the rigid schedule of many nurses, which prevent them from using libraries. Because the internet is available 24 hours a day, you can access libraries and other information sources on your own schedule. Even though most professional believe that searching literature in the work place benefits care, some supervisor and managers fail to facilitate or reward the practice, focusing instead on immediate patient care tasks. Employers need to provide system to access current literature and databases at the point of care, as well as giving nurses time and encouragement to use them. Literatures use should be considered as an intrinsic part of practice and rewarded as such. In such a time-limited work environment, accessibility to current information sources is critical.