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Evidence-Based Practice: Nursing

What is Evidence-Based Practice?

Evidence based nursing is a part of the larger scope of evidence based practice.  One of the most common defintions of evidence based practice comes from Dr. David Sackett. He describes EBP as:

"...the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of the individual patient. It means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research." 

Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M., Gray, J. A., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: What it is and what it isn’t. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 312(7023), 71–72.

 

The following diagram can help illustrate the components that go into evidence based practice:

 

 

Reddy, K. (2018). Evidence based medicine: A paradigm for clinical practice. Journal of Gandaki Medical College-Nepal, 11(2), 74-81.

Steps of Evidence-Based Practice Process

  1. Assess the patient: Start with the patient; determine a clinical problem or question that arises from the care of the patient.
  2. Ask a clinical question: Construct a well-built clinical question derived from the case
  3. Acquire the evidence to answer the question: Select the appropriate resource(s) and conduct a search.
  4. Appraise the evidence: Appraise that evidence for its validity (closeness to the truth) and applicability (usefulness in clinical practice).
  5. Apply the information: Return to the patient; integrate the evidence with clinical expertise and patient preferences; apply it to practice.
  6. Evaluate the patient's outcome and your own performance.

 

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*Modified from Duke University Medical Center

 

 

Levels of Evidence: Text Alternative

EBM Pyramid and EBM Page Generator, copyright 2006 Trustees of Dartmouth College and Yale University. All Rights Reserved. Produced by Jan Glover, David Izzo, Karen Odato and Lei Wang.

*Thank you to Walden University Library for granting BTC Library permission to reuse this content, Levels of Evidence Pyramid and Alternative Text, from their Evidence-Based Practice Academic Guide. 

An Introduction to Evidence-Based Practice

This self-paced, interactive tutorial will take you through the complete EBP process, emphasizing the elements of a well-built clinical question and the key issues that help determine the validity of evidence. This program was developed by the Medical Center Library at Duke University and the Health Sciences Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

© 2020 Duke University Medical Center Library & Archives. This is an open-access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike license.

Using PubMed in Evidence-Based Practice
This course includes scenarios and try-it exercises to simulate using PubMed to answer a real-life clinical question.

Evidence-Based Practice: An Introductory Tutorial 
*This tutorial is part of University of Minnesota Libraries, Health Sciences Libraries.