Evidence-Based Practice In Nursing Essay

The purpose of this post is to define research and evidenced-based practice in nursing. Research in nursing is a crucial element in providing up to date patient care. That research is then taken into clinical practice to provide quality care and improve outcomes. This post will give an example of a sample research and clinical question. These examples will demonstrate the difference between research nursing and evidenced-based practice (EBP).

Research is a growing position for nurses in health care. The research nurse is defined as an investigator of clinical information for the purpose of improving current standards of care (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2014). EBP uses the data collected through research and evaluation to integrate new practices in patient care (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2014). Once the research has been put into nursing practice, there is a process called quality improvement (QI), which evaluates outcomes. QI gives the research nurse the positive and negative

To develop a research question the nurse will review data, brainstorm, and identify related variables (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2014). My example of a research question is a common problem in the hospital setting, which is hand hygiene. What is the relationship between hand hygiene in the hospital setting and the occurrence of hospital acquired infections (HAI)? Many hospital systems have taken on this quality improvement initiative. The research involved may include observation of medical staff performing proper hand hygiene and collecting statistical data on the occurrence of HAIs (Hickman, 2015). The research is different from the clinical side, because the research nurse is collecting the facts to accurately describe the problem. Once a correlation is found the clinical question can be determined using the Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome (PICO) format (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber,