Evidence-based practices (EBP) are incredibly important to effective patient care; while my organization does its best to employ EBP, the organizational culture can often get in the way of facilitating these outcomes. We are encouraged to study on our own, and there are monthly meetings to go over new EBP and evaluate patient outcomes. However, my organization has not really become a learning organization as Estrada (2009) encourages for nursing practices; there is simply not the budget or the time to dedicate to constantly keeping up with new research and focusing our efforts on changing policy.
In order to change that, I feel I have a possible solution to encourage EBP culture in the organization. The nursing staff, outside of normal hospital and practice time, and bolstered by access to new medical journals, should coordinate set times to get together and share research found through reading on our own. We then take it to our supervisors and administrators, offering concise recommendations and strategies for EBP in our nursing practice. This allows us to focus our research, determine the latest developments, and work together to facilitate practice changes in our organization. While it requires more work on the nurses’ part, the easing of resource and time allocation on the part of hospital administrators might make them more amenable to facilitate these changes.
Having a concrete understanding of EBP is essential to proper nursing practice; “the use of EBP could provide greater consistency of patient care, using the most up-to-date and best research to obtain optimal outcomes, resulting in standardized care that is more cost-effective, equitable, and of higher quality” (Estrada 2009, p. 201). To that end, maintaining an updated knowledge of EBP helps nurses do their jobs the best they can, and provides the most positive outcomes for patients.
References
Aitken, L.M., Hackwood, B., Crouch, S., Clayton, S., West, N., Carney, D., & Jack, L. (2011).
Creating an environment to implement and sustain evidence based practice: a developmental process. Australian Critical Care 24: 244-254.
Barnsteiner, J.H., Reeder, V.C., Palma, W.H., Preston, A.M., & Walton, M. K. (2010).
Promoting evidence-based practice and translational research. Nurs Admin Q 34(3): 217-225.
Estrada, N. (2009). Exploring perceptions of a learning organization by RNs and relationship to
EBP believes and implementation in the acute care setting. Worldviews on Evidence-based Nursing: 200-209.
