Discussion: Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice
In your practice as a nurse, you may use procedures and methods that did not necessarily originate in evidence, but instead were derived from informal and unwritten conventions, traditions, and observations. While these techniques may have merit, practices are constantly being updated and contradicted by information from scholarly research studies and professional guidelines. This new information serves as “evidence” for revising practices to improve outcomes across health care.
Based on this evidence, you can formulate a question. In this Discussion, you consider the use of evidence-based practice in your own organization and formulate a question that you will need to answer for your portfolio project. This is called a PICOT question. You will also investigate strategies for overcoming barriers to implementing evidence-based practice (EBP).
To prepare:
- Consider a recent clinical experience in which you were providing care for a patient.
- Determine the extent to which the care that you provided was based on evidence and research findings or supported only by your organization’s standard procedures. How do you know if the tasks were based on research?
- What questions have you thought about in a particular area of care such as a procedure or policy?
- Review Chapter 2, pages 31–34 on “Asking Well worded Clinical Questions” in Polit & Beck and consult the resource from the Walden Student Center for Success: Clinical Question Anatomy & examples of PICOT questions (found in this week’s Learning Resources). Formulate your background questions and PICOT question.
- Reflect on the barriers that might inhibit the implementation of evidence-based practice in your clinical environment.
- Review the article “Adopting Evidence-Based Practice in Clinical Decision Making” in this week’s Learning Resources. Select one of the barriers described that is evident in your organization and formulate a plan for overcoming this barrier.
By Day 3
Post an evaluation of the use, or lack thereof, of EBP in a recent clinical experience. Identify which aspects of the care delivered, if any, were based on evidence and provide your rationale. List your background questions and PICOT question about this nursing topic. Critique how the policies, procedures, and culture in your organization may hinder or support the adoption of evidence-based practices. Identify the barrier you selected from the article and explain how this barrier could be overcome within your organization.
Course Project: Part 1—Identifying a Researchable Problem
One of the most challenging aspects of EBP is to actually identify the answerable question.
—Karen Sue Davies
Formulating a question that targets the goal of your research is a challenging but essential task. The question plays a crucial role in all other aspects of the research, including the determination of the research design and theoretical perspective to be applied, which data will be collected, and which tools will be used for analysis. It is therefore essential to take the time to ensure that the research question addresses what you actually want to study. Doing so will increase your likelihood of obtaining meaningful results.
In this first component of the Course Project, you formulate questions to address a particular nursing issue or problem. You use the PICOT model—patient/population, intervention/issue, comparison, and outcome—outlined in the Learning Resources to design your questions.
To prepare:
- Review the article, “Formulating the Evidence Based Practice Question: A Review of the Frameworks,” found in the Learning Resources for this week. Focus on the PICOT model for guiding the development of research questions.
- Review the section beginning on page 75 of the course text, titled, “Developing and Refining Research Problems” in the course text, which focuses on analyzing the feasibility of a research problem.
- Reflect on an issue or problem that you have noticed in your nursing practice. Consider the significance of this issue or problem.
- Generate at least five questions that relate to the issue which you have identified. Use the criteria in your course text to select one question that would be most appropriate in terms of significance, feasibility, and interest. Be prepared to explain your rationale.
- Formulate a preliminary PICO question—one that is answerable—based on your analysis. What are the PICO variables (patient/population, intervention/issue, comparison, and outcome) for this question?
Note: Not all of these variables may be appropriate to every question. Be sure to analyze which are and are not relevant to your specific question.
- Using the PICOT variables that you determined for your question, develop a list of at least 10 keywords that could be used when conducting a literature search to investigate current research pertaining to the question.
To complete:
Write a 3- to 4-page paper that includes the following:
- A summary of your area of interest, an identification of the problem that you have selected, and an explanation of the significance of this problem for nursing practice
- The 5 questions you have generated and a description of how you analyzed them for feasibility
- Your preliminary PICOT question and a description of each PICOT variable relevant to your question
- At least 10 possible keywords that could be used when conducting a literature search for your PICOT question and a rationale for your selections
