New Study Offers Guidance on how to Offer Evidence-Based Care

Evidence-based care is a hallmark of good health care practice, but it can be difficult to ensure that evidence-based practice is the norm throughout health care systems. A new study conducted by nurse researchers offers guidance for health care providers on effective adoption of evidence-based practice in clinical settings. The guidance includes 24 evidence-based practice competencies for registered and advanced-practice nurses in real-world clinical settings.

The study, led by Bernadette Melnyk, dean of The Ohio State University College of Nursing and chief wellness officer for Ohio State, recommends that health care institutions build these skills into employment expectations, evaluations, and clinical ladder promotion systems to ensure ongoing implementation of evidence-based care.

To develop the list of competencies, the research team collected input from national leaders in evidence-based practice (EBP) and surveyed 80 nurses who are EBP mentors. Thirteen of the competencies apply to registered nurses and the other 11 are for advanced practice nurses.

The list of the 24 evidence-based practice competencies is available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/wvn.12021/full and the full study is published in the journal Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing. An Ohio State University statement on the study is available here.

The goal of an INQRI-funded project “Dissemination and Implementation of Evidence-Based Methods to Measure and Improve Pain Outcomes” was to disseminate and implement evidence-based approaches to measure and improve pain care and outcomes in a sample of 100 hospitals across the United States. Two webinars are available detailing the results of the project: Webinar I and Webinar II. The interdisciplinary team was led by Susan Beck and Nancy Dunton.