Evidence Based Practice Essay Example

Evidence Based Practice

Submission date:

Eaton, Meins, Mitchell, Voss, & Doorenbos, (2015) Evidence based practice entails clinical decision making process based on the up-to-date best research evidence, patient preferences and clinical expertise towards improved patient outcome. This essay will focus on a fundamental issue within the case study, come up with a clinical answerable question in line with clinical reasoning and explore EBP fundamental role in developing, implementing and maintaining hospital policies.

From the case study, Evie a nurse on a probation, did choose to use auscultatory method only, while the hospital policies require that child’s blood pressure be measured using both the oscillometric devices and the auscultating calf blood pressure. Evie, felt that the baby was difficult to handle and did waste most of her time in following the hospital protocols every 2 hours. On making up her mind on the choice to use in measuring the 3-year child’s blood pressure, Evie found herself in a hot soup the following day as she was asked by the ward manager to give a reason of not using the hospital guidelines to the latter. It was mandatory to auscultate calf blood pressure every two hours. Though the case comprises of many concerns that might be chosen, this issue of Evie not following hospital guidelines in patient care and management was chosen since the patient outcome is a primary concern in adopting and implementing EBP in nursing. Use of hospital guideline is made to ensure that the best healthcare quality is delivered to the patient (Woolf, Grol, Hutchinson, Eccles & Grimshaw, 1999).

The main objective of EBP is to provide nurses and clinicians with fundamental tools that offer excellent care, encourage creativity and innovation on how to implement EBP data and solve clinical problems in reliable and valid ways to meet health needs of a particular patient (Dickerson, 2013). However, in an effort to meet this objective, nurse face various barriers. As per 2012 survey among American Nurses Association it was found that most nurses were willing to gather essential skills and knowledge to offer evidence-based care but implementation barriers were the main hindrance (Eaton et al., 2013). Evie, did share her challenge in implementing hospital guideline of taking BP of the 3-year child and while Nellie, advised her to keep to the protocol, Zoe was quick to tell her to go by her choice. According to Eaton, et al., (2013) many nurses wish to adopt the EBP, but are faced with a myriad of challenges derailing the EBP adoption. EBP in healthcare set-up is affected by other factors such as insufficient knowledge on pain management, pharmacologic intervention is underuse, inadequate pain assessment, heavy workload and lack of time etc. To Evie, the child was difficult and did consume much time derailing other process that Evie was to accomplish during her schedule.

EBP has profound five stages. The first stage is coming up with an answerable question. The question ought to be well reasoned to allow quality searching. A well founded question should have in place the PICO model acronym; P-population, I-intervention, C-comparison (not always) and O-Outcome. The question developed in this essay will thus follow the PICO concept (CQ University Library, 2017). In this case the study will ask an answerable question; what are the reasons that deter nurses from following hospital procedures when handling a patient?

In conclusion, EBP is fundamental tool within the healthcare. Always following hospital guidelines and policies ensures that all patients are well attended to ensure excellent health outcome. Failure to follow set guidelines, jeopardizes the nurse and nursing procedures. EBP has five steps and the first step is setting up answerable question following the PICO concept.

References

CQ University Library, (2017). Formulating the Question: PICO. Retrieved 8/12/17 from, http://libguides.library.cqu.edu.au/content.php?pid=10261&sid=3825072

Dickerson, P.S. (2013). Evidence-based practice: why does it matter? Ohio Nurse, 7(1):1-16

Eaton, L.H., Meins, A.R., Mitchell, P.H., Voss, J. & Doorenbos, A.Z. (2015). Evidence-based practice beliefs and behaviors of nurses providing cancer pain management: a mixed-methods approach. Oncol Nurs Forum, 1:42(2):165-173.

Woolf, S.H., Grol, R., Hutchinson, A., Eccles & Grimshaw, J. (1999). Potential benefits, limitations and harms of clinical guidelines. BMJ, 318(7182):527-530.