Barriers to EBP and Nursing Care Improvement Strategies
Pursuing and implementing EBP can be hindered by various influential barriers, including decision-makers’ inability to comprehend EBP’s value to patients and nurses, which then contributes to organizational resistance to change. In Chapter 1, Houser (2018) mentions that nurses in healthcare facilities without the Magnet status are far more likely to experience significant barriers to EBP due to the absence of formalized evidence integration processes and relevant resources. However, without understanding the helpfulness of EBP-related processes, organizations will not transition to the resource creation stage. One strategy to address this barrier and facilitate the use of evidence refers to inducing changes in thinking through fostering a culture of EBP within an organization. Being effort-intensive, the strategy involves educational events for the healthcare staff (Cleary-Holdforth et al., 2021). Education can be focused on EBP’s value in promoting the facility’s organizational excellence, status in the local healthcare system, and patient satisfaction (Lehane et al., 2019). My current workplace lacks a nursing culture conducive to EBP. Thus, using rhetoric strategies that link EBP to the facility’s reputational goals to encourage the leadership to pursue this form of staff teaching could be helpful.
Changing Perspectives on EBP and Nursing Research
Since the start of the course, my thinking regarding nursing research and EBP has changed drastically due to an enhanced understanding of how opportunities for knowledge improvement and evidence-based decisions permeate the profession. With an increasing number of trustworthy scholarly journals focused on nurse-patient communication, care issues, and risk avoidance strategies for various conditions, engaging in EBP has become easier. Healthcare facilities’ managerial teams can promote care professionals’ acquaintance with credible research-based data through critical appraisal workshops, promoting membership in professional nursing associations, or ensuring nurses’ access to research databases. The most crucial takeaway from the course is nursing professionals’ daily exposure to virtually endless opportunities for in-depth research to improve patient satisfaction. In Chapter 16 of the textbook, Houser (2018) explains various clinical sources of data to prompt the identification of problems requiring EBP. Some examples are follow-up calls, patients’ frequent questions, professional communication with colleagues, and patient care reports (Houser, 2018). This takeaway’s helpfulness is rooted in its applicability to almost any nurse’s practice when generating research ideas.
References
Cleary-Holdforth, J., O’Mathúna, D., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2021). Evidence-based practice beliefs, implementation, and organizational culture and readiness for EBP among nurses, midwives, educators, and students in the Republic of Ireland. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 18(6), 379-388.
Houser, J. (2018). Nursing research: Reading, using and creating evidence (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Lehane, E., Leahy-Warren, P., O’Riordan, C., Savage, E., Drennan, J., O’Tuathaigh, C., O’Connor, M., Corrigan, M., Burke, F., Hayes, M., Lynch, H., Sahm, L., Heffernan, E., O’Keeffe, K., Blake, C., Horgan, F., & Hegarty, J. (2019). Evidence-based practice education for healthcare professions: An expert view. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, 24(3), 103-108.