Evidence-Based Practice: Are Nurses Ready?

Purpose:
The purpose of this study was to evaluate factors that determine the readiness of registered nurses to adopt evidence based practices and research outcomes in their nursing practice using an electronic tool which measured both attitudes toward and knowledge of Evidence-based Practice.

Background/Significance:
As organizations struggle to strengthen the implementation of Evidence-Based Practice key elements have been identified in the literature as contributing to implementation success including characteristics of the individual nurse and the organization, access to evidence itself, and the overall practice environment. Evidence-based practice was identified as a key educational goal for this facility and it was determined that prior to implementation, specific areas to target should be identified.

Methods:
A cross–sectional design was used. The target population was 1490 registered nurses in a Magnet-recognized® 525 bed tertiary care hospital.Answers to the survey questions were aggregated by Survey Monkey and analyzed by the researchers using descriptive and inferential statistics. Attitudes toward and knowledge of EBP were analyzed by obtaining the mean of the 12 nursing beliefs and converting these into a scale. Pearson correlation showed statistically significant results in membership in a professional organization, ability to perform a literature search, participation in research, ability to identify research problems and utilization of research in practice.

Results:
Response rate was 25% with greater than half of the respondents having at least a Baccalaureate degree. Nurses reported adequate or more than adequate resources in their work area related to print materials. Over two thirds of the nurses reported needing information daily or occasionally to support their nursing role and were either expert or proficient in use of a computer, use of windows operating system, and use of other computer programs. Nurses reported the three primary organization constraints were budget for training in resource utilization, difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff, and presence of other goals with a higher priority.

Conclusions and Implications for Practice:
Results will be used to design targeted educational strategies to facilitate implementation of EBP in nursing practice. Among these will be familiarizing nurses with resources that currently exist in our hospital that are underutilized including library services and Nursing Resource Center.