Respond to statement below. For your response posts, provide strategies for overcoming the barriers identified in their postings. How might one overcome resistance to implementing evidence-based practice?
The establishment of evidence-based practice (EBP) remains one of the best health policies that have significantly transformed healthcare into a better and safe environment that provides patient-focused care leading to a positive outcome. Immense literature shows that nurses’ application of evidence-based practice revolves around a problem-solving approach that integrates the use of existing research studies, clinical expertise, and patient values and preferences to guide practice management (Duff, Cullen, Hanrahan & Steelman, 2020). Adopting evidence-based healthcare practice has improved patient safety, reduced healthcare costs, heightened positive patient outcomes, and reduced patient outcome variation.
The value of the application of evidence-based healthcare practice is to help understand the varying needs of each patient, thus applying the appropriate diagnostic procedure which eliminates the risk of clinical errors. The use of evidence-based practice promotes incorporating patient values and circumstances, enabling the best available evidence and clinical expertise. In essence, healthcare provides the highest quality and cost-efficient care, illustrating one of the strategic ways to attain the highest standard of care. Significantly, the adoption of evidence-based practice incorporates the latest research in healthcare through real-life scenarios and further creates a quality improvement process that modifies systems and procedures, thus reinforcing positive patient outcomes.
The development of evidence-based practice started through the different nursing concepts developed by various theorists based on science and human relations, which provided lessons that should be adopted alongside mistakes that should be avoided. Specifically, Florence Nightingale, in the 19th century, started the journey in search of the best treatment to meet the various needs of patients. Onwards the 19th century, many theorists have advanced nursing research by emphasizing physical and spiritual needs. Specifically, incorporating patients in clinical procedures would help understand their environment, guide the nursing science, reducing mortality and morbidity rates. Healthcare professionals have continuously been researching the best policies to improve the quality of care. David Sackett, the father of evidence-based practice, revealed and implemented the vision for Florence Nightingale entirely.
Be that as it may, applying an evidence-based approach in a clinical setting is faced with some challenges, including lack of knowledge, training, resources, time, and role strain. Even after being trained on the utilization of evidence-based practice, many nurses usually find it hard to employ the skills and knowledge because of a lack of management support and education gap. In other incidences, and given that healthcare operates in a bureaucratic way, many nurses are assigned many duties making the application of evidence-based practice extremely difficult. For instance, nurses must attend to many customers within a limited time, making it impractical to employ evidence-based practice fully.
In summary, the healthcare industry remains evolving, presenting unique challenges that require applying various health reforms such as evidence-based practice to meet individual health needs. Evidence-based practice acts as the universal guidance helping all the nurses globally to offer improved patient care through asking the customer questions, utilizing the best available evidence, and involving the patient in the clinical process.
