Nursing: Evidence-Based Practice
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is often and actively applied in nursing practice to guarantee that the most appropriate and effective treatment plans and interventions are used to meet patients’ needs and expectations. Accordingly, EBP is associated with gathering, analyzing, and applying various research findings to nursing practice in different cases, and EBP also informs nurses’ and healthcare professionals’ problem-solving and decision-making (McEwen & Wills, 2019). As a result, nurses can choose and implement the most efficient method and technique to cope with a patient’s problem by relying on research studies’ findings.
The examples of applying EBP can be related to different healthcare and nursing fields, but all of them are based on following a certain protocol of decision-making. The first step is the identification of a problem and the formulation of a clinical question to address. The second step is the collection of evidence and research data on the problem that is followed by their analysis and evaluation (McEwen & Wills, 2019). Then it is necessary to implement evidence as an intervention or a treatment option and assess outcomes for patients to decide on the effectiveness of the practice (Mackey & Bassendowski, 2017). For example, a patient with a urinary tract infection can be irresponsive to the types of antibiotics that are most frequently applied in practice. Therefore, it is necessary to collect data from randomized controlled trials to determine alternative treatment plans that can be effective for the case, depending on a patient’s age, history of diseases, and the use of antibiotics. It is also important to note that nurses’ care should also be determined depending on EBP, in this case, to respond to a patient’s needs.
References
Mackey, A., & Bassendowski, S. (2017). The history of evidence-based practice in nursing education and practice. Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(1), 51-55. Web.
McEwen, M., & Wills, E. M. (2019). Theoretical basis for nursing (5th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.