Evidence-Based Practice - Essay Example

Evidence-Based practice is one of the most important underlying principles in modern healthcare" Critically evaluate this ment using support from literature. Introduction: Nurses are members of the largest group of professionals that deliver healthcare, and in their practice, they identify, evaluate, and apply the best evidence day in and day out. Modern healthcare with its monstrous technological improvement is certain to face uncertainties about the guiding principles in practice. A practitioner is faced with questions about the most effective management of certain patients most often. Questions are bound to arise in the areas of patients’ experiences and outcomes related to an illness. Evidence-based practice can be a very important tool to decrease this experience of uncertainty by the healthcare professionals when they desire to provide quality care to the patients. Nurses as providers of healthcare services are uniquely positioned to advance the science of evidence-based practice in nursing. During the last decade or so, nursing has embraced and begun to integrate evidence-based practice, which is considered to be the gold standard of healthcare, to advance the profession of nursing. Evidence-based practice is recognised to be creating a difference in the healthcare system and in outcomes of individual patient services. Evidences validate and document the proposition, and incorporating evidence in practice would lead to value addition, achievement of standards, accomplishment of quality, and improvement of efficacy of healthcare, at least as is relevant to nursing practices. Evidence-based practice is an approach that enables healthcare providers to provide the highest quality of care while attempting to meet the multifaceted needs of the patients including their families. This approach, however, needs knowledge on the part of healthcare professionals about how to find, critically appraise, and use the best evidence in the base interests of their patients. Evidence in the literature goes in favour of evidence-based practice. Despite this finding and standardization of practice guidelines in the line of evidence bases, it is an unfortunate finding that while being providers, the healthcare professionals do not base patient care on the principles of evidence-based practice, although while being at the receiving end, they strongly desire to receive care that is evidence based. While making a clinical decision regarding an assessment or interventions to a specific patient, the guidance of evidence base is of utmost importance. There is factually an explosion of knowledge from scientific studies, and in this demanding situation, the healthcare professionals need to translate evidence from research into base practices in an efficient manner. Evidence indicates that patients who receive care based on the latest and best evidence from well-designed studies experience better outcomes, and the other side of the coin is more intriguing for there is evidence that many evidences from research are not implemented in practice; in fact, only a small percentage of healthcare providers are in habit of incorporating research findings in the practice when decisions about care of the patients are concerned. Government has policies in place to modernize healthcare, and to be able to achieve this, there is a commitment of the authority to the development of quality and person-centred health services that builds up on the framework if evidence. The vision for nursing in the twenty-first century is for all nurses to seek evidence out that can be applied in everyday practice. Department of Health requires increasing proportion of healthcare personnel actively participating in research and development. The evidence for evidence-based research is sometimes very ironic. For example, evidence suggests that most of the hospital-acquired infections are transmitted by contamination, and healthcare professionals act as vectors. Evidence also points to the fact that most of these infections could have been prevented by simple hand washings. Clinical practice guidelines were developed on the basis of that evidence so incorporation of this evidence would reduce the incidence of hospital-acquired infections and morbidity and costs related to that. When this was implemented, it was found that a particular strain of bacteria is gaining rapid resistance to the conventional antibiotics, and the infection threats posed by that strain has gained epidemic magnitude. Research into prevalence of that bacterial strain specially in hospital-acquired infections or healthcare-associated infections has revealed that hand washing techniques are not being followed. Evidence from literature also reveals that very few practicing nurses implement evidences from research study into their practices. Many a times, healthcare providers would not follow established evidence-based practice guidelines. It takes a long period of 17 years to translate research findings into practice, and the rate at which newer findings from research are pouring in, this time span is too long to achieve the best out of it. The amount and quality of clinical research has increased, and the educational programmes routinely incorporate more research content, it is very unfortunate that awareness and use of research by practicing healthcare providers remain poor. However, it is also acknowledged that although incorporation of research into practice is the need of the hour, it is a very difficult task to accomplish. Considering the volume of evidence and the rate at which it is produced, it is almost impossible to keep on top of the flooding body of knowledge so that busy practitioners can find it accessible and be alert to its quality. To be able to extract maximum benefits out of research evidences, it is important to remember that one needs to be critical about a research before accepting the evidence into practice. It is very crucial to be aware of different kinds of evidence and knowledge that are being generated by different kinds of research methodologies, and the practitioner needs to be careful about the strength and weakness of each with clear conceptualization about where it is applicable. Care should be taken in extrapolating the evidence with the limitations about generalization kept in mind while applying the evidence in practice. There is also some evidence to indicate that practitioners who use an evidence-based approach to delivering patient care experience a high level of satisfaction in comparison to those who deliver care that is ingrained in traditional practice norms. Under increasingly heavy patient loads, the care provider of present day is forced to deliver high-quality and safe care, and from this perspective, evidence from research can only provide outstanding standards of care to the patients. Supporters and advocates of evidence-based practice claim that this approach results in the best possible practice and the best use of the resources. In contrast, opponents have claims that evidence-based practice is a covert method of rationing the resources, is overly simplistic, and invariably constraints professional autonomy. Critics have pointed out that there is no evidence that evidence-based practice actually works. Literature suggests that the consensus on the merits of evidence-based practice is limited. Even then, evidence-based practice has progressed and is in the process of being incorporated into practice guidelines everywhere. The new generation of practitioners prefers to be critical thinkers who commits to using appropriate and referenced research information, validated and accepted data sources as well as accurate sources for a clinical decision making. Critical reasoning is the new watch word for modern healthcare practice, where evidence from evidence based practice is utilized in the process of effective problem solving. Using the evidence-based process, the practitioners of modern healthcare attempts to delineate a problem, understand its indications, define the elements and components of the problem, develop the reference frames of the problem, and in this process, ultimately define the direction that would need to be pursued in order to appropriately address the problem. Read More