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
By Day 7
Submit your Project. It will also be a component of your Portfolio Assignment for this course, which is due by Day 7 of Week 10.
Reference:
Davies, K. S. (2011). Formulating the evidence based practice question: A review of the frameworks. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 6(2), 75–80. Retrieved from https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/viewFile/9741/8144
2nd part
Course Project: Part 2—Literature Review
This is a continuation of the Course Project presented in Week 2. Before you begin, review the Course Project Overview document located in the Week 2 Resources area.
The literature review is a critical piece in the research process because it helps a researcher determine what is currently known about a topic and identify gaps or further questions. Conducting a thorough literature review can be a time-consuming process, but the effort helps establish the foundation for everything that will follow. For this part of your Course Project, you will conduct a brief literature review to find information on the question you developed in Week 2. This will provide you with experience in searching databases and identifying applicable resources.
To prepare:
- Review the information in Chapter 5 of the course text, focusing on the steps for conducting a literature review and for compiling your findings.
- Using the question you selected in your Week 2 Project (Part 1 of the Course Project), locate 5 or more full-text research articles that are relevant to your PICOT question. Include at least 1 systematic review and 1 integrative review if possible. Use the search tools and techniques mentioned in your readings this week to enhance the comprehensiveness and objectivity of your review. You may gather these articles from any appropriate source, but make sure at least 3 of these articles are available as full-text versions through Walden Library’s databases.
- Read through the articles carefully. Eliminate studies that are not appropriate and add others to your list as needed. Although you may include more, you are expected to include a minimum of five articles. Complete a literature review summary table using the Literature Review Summary Table Template located in this week’s Learning Resources.
- Prepare to summarize and synthesize the literature using the information on writing a literature review found in Chapter 5 of the course text.
To complete:
Write a 3- to 4-page literature review that includes the following:
- A synthesis of what the studies reveal about the current state of knowledge on the question that you developed
- Point out inconsistencies and contradictions in the literature and offer possible explanations for inconsistencies.
- Preliminary conclusions on whether the evidence provides strong support for a change in practice or whether further research is needed to adequately address your inquiry
- Your literature review summary table with all references formatted in correct APA style
Note: Certain aspects of conducting a standard review of literature have not yet been covered in this course. Therefore, while you are invited to critically examine any aspect of the studies (e.g., a study’s design, appropriateness of the theoretic framework, data sampling methods), your conclusion should be considered preliminary. Bear in mind that five studies are typically not enough to reflect the full range of knowledge on a particular question and you are not expected to be familiar enough with research methodology to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of the studies.
By Day 7 of Week 5
This part of the Course Project is due. It will also be a component in your Portfolio Assignment in this course, which is due by Day 7 of Week 10.
3rd part
Course Project: Part 3—Translating Evidence Into Practice
In Part 3 of the Course Project, you consider how the evidence you gathered during Part 2 can be translated into nursing practice.
Now that you have located available research on your PICOT question, you will examine what the research indicates about nursing practices. Connecting research evidence and findings to actual decisions and tasks that nurses complete in their daily practice is essentially what evidence-based practice is all about. This final component of the Course Project asks you to translate the evidence and data from your literature review into authentic practices that can be adopted to improve health care outcomes. In addition, you will also consider possible methods and strategies for disseminating evidence-based practices to your colleagues and to the broader health care field.
To prepare:
- Consider Parts 1 and 2 of your Course Project. How does the research address your PICOT question?
- With your PICOT question in mind, identify at least one nursing practice that is supported by the evidence in two or more of the articles from your literature review. Consider what the evidence indicates about how this practice contributes to better outcomes.
- Explore possible consequences of failing to adopt the evidence-based practice that you identified.
- Consider how you would disseminate information about this evidence-based practice throughout your organization or practice setting. How would you communicate the importance of the practice?
To complete:
In a 3- to 4-page paper:
- Restate your PICOT question and its significance to nursing practice.
- Summarize the findings from the articles you selected for your literature review. Describe at least one nursing practice that is supported by the evidence in the articles. Justify your response with specific references to at least 2 of the articles.
- Explain how the evidence-based practice that you identified contributes to better outcomes. In addition, identify potential negative outcomes that could result from failing to use the evidence-based practice.
- Outline the strategy for disseminating the evidence-based practice that you identified throughout your practice setting. Explain how you would communicate the importance of the practice to your colleagues. Describe how you would move from disseminating the information to implementing the evidence-based practice within your organization. How would you address concerns and opposition to the change in practice?
By Day 7 of Week 10
This part of the Course Project is due. It should be combined with the other two components of the Course Project and turned in as your Portfolio Assignment for this course.
Note: In addition, include a 1-page summary of your project.
For this final iteration, you will need to:
- Submit your paper to Grammarly and SafeAssign through the Walden Writing Center. Based on the Grammarly and SafeAssign reports, revise your paper as necessary.
- Reminder: The School of Nursing requires that all papers submitted include a title page, introduction, summary, and references. The School of Nursing Sample Paper provided at the Walden Writing Center provides an example of those required elements (available from the Walden University website found in this week’s Learning Resources). All papers submitted must use this formatting.
