Utilization of Evidence-Based Practice in the Acute Care Setting

Introduction

Evidence based practice is a new health management method to improve the quality of services offered to the patients suffering from acute conditions. The main aim of the medical management method is to improve safety of the patient as well as making the services affordable. This practice has been used to care for conditions such as diabetes, heart failure, cancer among others; however there has been some difficulty in implementation of evidence based practice in acute care. This paper discusses how evidence based practice is used to offer quality medical attention to acute conditions.

Use of evidence based practice

Researchers have been paying attention on how to implement the practice to improve quality and safety of patient because what has been developed has not been put to practice. There has been difficulty to change the traditional health care to evidence based practice in health sector. Evidence based practice is the use of current best evidence by expertise in health care and follow the patient values. Best evidence includes experimental clinical trials that are randomized and controlled. Descriptive and qualitative research methods should also be used. This will make evidence research findings available to health practitioners. Evidence practice should be implemented with patient values in order to improve quality and safety.

Traditional based evidence

Traditionally the evidence practice was not available and decision making was based on scientists and experts’ opinion. More evidence based researched should therefore be carried out in order for evidence based practice to be implemented. Researchers have been done but implementation of the findings into practice has been difficult. This is because of lack of feedback after a research is put into practice. This therefore calls for emphasize on implementation of evidence based practice and health care providers should always give feedback on effectiveness of the practice. This will act in triggering all the health care providers to carry out evidence based researches and implement them with expertise and patient values (Prior, Wilkinson, & Neville, 2010).

Steps of evidence based practice

When implementing an evident based practice, there are some crucial steps that needs to be undertaken as follows:

Knowledge transfer

This involves transfer of knowledge and research findings in to practice. Use of evidence based practice involves three stages that is creation of knowledge and refinement, distribution and circulation of the knowledge, approval and realization of what have been learnt. This leads to evidence based practice which improves the quality of services offered. Creation of knowledge involves conducting researches on acute conditions such as diabetes and cancer in order to come up with evidence based findings. These findings are analyzed and interpreted for the care providers to understand and put in to practice. The findings are then distributed to the health providers by the authorities who emphasize they should be put in to practice. Some of health providers might be resistant to change and might fail to apply the evidence based practice. Therefore it is important that the utilization of evidence based practice research to be carried out. This will show how far the practice has been implemented so that the relevant authority can be informed to pursue clinicians to practice it. Dissemination bodies form partnership in order to provide an approval seal for the new knowledge to be put into practice. These bodies include patients’ safety foundation and multidisciplinary knowledge transfer teams. A research on utilization of evidence based practice will provide these bodies with information whether their work was effective. If not, they will be able to go back and disseminate the information on knew knowledge and convince the care providers on importance of applying the knowledge.

Come up with models and appropriate settings

Models of evidence based practice has been available in clinical settings and therefore this is an important topic to research on in order to find out whether the models have been implemented. It will also be important to carry out this research to find out how far the model has been implemented. The research on evidence based practices will also give a clear perception on how the health care provides perceiving the new method of health care practices. The research will show whether the evidence based practice has been adopted. This is because change of practices can sometime be difficult and take long to be adopted. Changing the practice takes individual efforts as well as organizational effort. The research on utilization of evidence based practice will trigger the care providers’ efforts of implementing the new practice. It will act as a way of getting the feedback after introduction of a new model of practice in health care. Carrying out this research will act as a way of evaluating the evidence based practice. This is because the care providers will be able to provide information on the benefits of the practice and also criticize it. They can also give their opinions on what need to be improved for the practice to be effective. The research will also show the benefits the evidence based practice has to the patients. It will show whether there is improvement in patients’ safety and quality of services offered.

Involving all stakeholders

Some of the evidence based practices are easily adopted while others take time to be adopted. Practices such as adoption of a vaccine for example a malaria vaccine can be adopted easily than pain management in acute conditions such as cancer. Research on utilization of evidence based practice will be able to reveal this. It will also show whether the set guidelines for a particular evidence based practice is being applied properly.

Absorptive capacity is a social system that affects adoption of evidence based practice in acute care. Information sharing in clinical settings is an important tool in implementation of evidence based practice. The research on utilization of evidence based practice will reveal whether there is an effective information sharing among the care providers in medical field.

Translation of evidence to practice is an important part of evidence based practice. This is achieved when there is effective communication among care providers. The topic on utilization of evidence based can be used to formulate ways of enhancing communication among care providers for it will show familiarity of the evidence based practice among the clinicians. This will further explain whether there is information sharing (Kuo, Lin, Lee, Chang, Fan & Chang, 2011).

Conclusion

There is no much research done on utilization of evidence based practice in acute care and therefore it will be a good opportunity to further research in the area. The findings will be used to improve utilization of evidence based practice in acute care. It will show which evidence has not been implemented due to laxity of care providers and this will help to come up with a strategy to implement the practice. The research will show the effect of practice on patients whether it has improved the quality and safety of patients.

References

Kuo, H., Lin, C., Lee, H., Chang, M., Fan, S., & Chang, Y. (2011). Building an evidence-based practice culture: incorporating evidence-based nursing in the clinical ladder system [Chinese]. Journal of Nursing, 58(2), 68-74.

Prior, P., Wilkinson, J., & Neville, S. (2010). Practice nurse use of evidence in clinical practice: a descriptive study. Nursing Praxis in New Zealand, 26(2), 14-25