1. How would you set up a component of your clinical course to introduce nursing students to evidence-based practice?
An introduction to evidence-based practice requires nursing educators to provide opportunities for students to understand the importance of this process in making decisions regarding patient care and treatment. Many nursing students are unaware of the potential benefits of evidence-based practice research and require training to determine how to identify studies which are relevant to a specific clinical topic. Nurse educators should implement tools in their coursework to educate students regarding this process and provide them with resources which may be used to conduct research independently. The key factors in providing an educational platform include educating students regarding how to conduct an effective literature appraisal, determining how this evidence applies to clinical reasoning and decision-making, and how to solve problems with patients using this evidence (Melnyk, Gallagher-Ford, Long, & Fineout-Overholt, 2014). Nurse educators should offer information regarding how to conduct searches in a variety of different databases where research articles are available and how to narrow down searches by using specific key words or phrases (Melnyk et al., 2014). Nursing students are likely to benefit from different activities which require them to think critically regarding clinical needs and to apply evidence accordingly to identify solutions to these problems (Melnyk et al., 2014). Specific coursework should consider the utilization of specific databases and how to restrict searches to identify studies which are specific to a particular problem and which are derived from different types of journals, such as peer-reviewed journals, in addition to searches which narrow down other specifics such as articles from specific periods or by specific authors (Melnyk et al., 2014). Nurse educators must provide these resources to students which they are likely to use throughout their careers and offer them the opportunity to conduct searches with their guidance so that they can perform this work independently once they are actively working in the field with patients who require real-time solutions to different problems.
2. How would you use this part of the course to ensure that students were using evidence-based practice?
Nurse educators have a responsibility not only to provide education to students regarding evidence-based searches using different databases but to also evaluate them when they conduct research and apply this evidence to real-world clinical problems, such as the identification of prior evidence regarding patient falls risk and strategies to reduce this problem in real-world settings during a classroom or homework exercise. Reporting these findings to the class will guide students in understanding how evidence can contribute to new alternatives to support patient care and treatment more effectively. This is essential to the learning curve and offers an opportunity for educators to evaluate students by conducting exercises in which they have real-world problems to consider and must apply existing evidence to develop solutions. This may be a useful exercise in solving problems at the point-of-care; therefore, clinical simulations where evidence-based practice will be useful should be tested among students (Black, Balneaves, Garossino, Puyat, & Qian, 2015). Nursing students must be prepared to solve many problems quickly; therefore, evidence-based knowledge must be identified using available research databases (Black et al., 2015). Nursing educators must start this process with their students as early as possible because barriers to applying evidence-based practice remain significant in many nursing units; therefore, understanding the benefits of this practice as early as possible will likely benefit students and provide them with the necessary resources to be successful in identifying, interpreting, and applying evidence-based knowledge to solve different problems (Black et al., 2015). Nurse educators must identify important exercises such as database searches regarding specific topics of interest to nurses and a discussion of these findings as homework assignments to better acclimate students in conducting research. These tasks will offer students knowledge which they can apply to the practice setting to encourage the use of evidence-based practice in decision-making. The use of evidence-based practice can offer this opportunity and engage students on a variety of perspectives which may be applied to the clinical setting.
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3. How could this particular strategy also support the student’s utilization of evidence-based practice in his/her future career?
For nursing students, evidence-based practice competencies are critical and should be evaluated at this level; therefore, understanding the level of competency of nursing students must be identified with the use of different instruments, including examinations and questionnaires to determine where evidence-based competencies are strong and where additional work is required to master this technique (Ruzafa-Martinez, Lopez-Iborra, Moreno-Casbas, & Madrigal-Torres, 2013). Students’ capacity to understand evidence-based practice is instrumental in shaping their future careers and must be tested at the student level because this will set the tone for its application in future years (Ruzafa-Martinez et al., 2013). It is imperative that nursing students receive a variety of tools that will be applied to the clinical setting and used appropriately in this context; therefore, these tools must be encouraged at the student level so that their value is increased and supported upon graduation and into the nursing career path (Ruzafa-Martinez et al., 2013). In response to the demand for evidence-based practice education for nursing students, there is a critical need to apply specific techniques that students will use by embracing technology and search engines relative to databases which offer journals and articles with a variety of evidence-based solutions. E-learning tools are essential for nursing students to promote greater efficiency and understanding how technology use is essential to obtaining evidence-based research (Lahti, Hatonen, & Valimaki, 2014). From this perspective, the development of tools to provide nursing students with evidence-based knowledge are critical as a foundation for future nursing practice objectives (Lahti et al., 2014). The application of these tools in the practice setting is essential and requires a level of comfort and understanding of the goals of evidence-based knowledge to integrate this information to solve problems. These are critical priorities which require significant attention and focus from nurses to apply evidence-based knowledge to real-time problems so that patients will benefit from these tools.
- Black, A. T., Balneaves, L. G., Garossino, C., Puyat, J. H., & Qian, H. (2015). Promoting evidence-based practice through a research training program for point-of-care clinicians. The Journal of nursing administration, 45(1), 14.
- Lahti, M., Hätönen, H., & Välimäki, M. (2014). Impact of e-learning on nurses’ and student nurses knowledge, skills, and satisfaction: a systematic review and meta-analysis. International journal of nursing studies, 51(1), 136-149.
- Melnyk, B. M., Gallagher‐Ford, L., Long, L. E., & Fineout‐Overholt, E. (2014). The establishment of evidence‐based practice competencies for practicing registered nurses and advanced practice nurses in real‐world clinical settings: Proficiencies to improve healthcare quality, reliability, patient outcomes, and costs. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 11(1), 5-15.
- Ruzafa-Martinez, M., Lopez-Iborra, L., Moreno-Casbas, T., & Madrigal-Torres, M. (2013). Development and validation of the competence in evidence based practice questionnaire EBP-COQ) among nursing students. BMC medical education, 13(1), 19.
