E-Journal Club #3

Newhouse, Robin P., RN, PhD, CNA, CNOR

“Creating Infrastructure Supportive of Evidence-Based Nursing Practice: Leadership Strategies” Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing 4 (1), 21–29.

Author’s Abstract:

“Nursing leadership is the cornerstone of successful evidence-based practice (EBP) programs within health care organizations. The key to success is a strategic approach to building an EBP infrastructure, with allocation of appropriate human and material resources.

This article indicates the organizational infrastructure that enables evidence-based nursing practice and strategies for leaders to enhance evidence-based practice using "the conceptual model for considering the determinants of diffusion, dissemination, and implementation of innovations in health service delivery and organization."

Enabling EBP within organizations is important for promoting positive outcomes for nurses and patients. Fostering EBP is not a static or immediate outcome, but a long-term developmental process within organizations. Implementation requires multiple strategies to cultivate a culture of inquiry where nurses generate and answer important questions to guide practice.

Organizations that can enable the culture and build infrastructure to help nurses develop EBP competencies will produce a professional environment that will result in both personal growth for their staff and improvements in quality that would not otherwise be possible.”

Commentary

We were just discussion promotion of evidence-based “thinking” in the research council this week. Even though putting research into practice is clear, using this evidence in practice is not always easy, especially when your physician says “I don’t like to use Versed.” I think we as nurses are used to looking toward the physician as the absolute leader. It is a shift in our way of practice to realize we must now, perhaps, remind the physician that that is “not what the literature supports” or that "our new policy" now asks us to do things another way. But if everyone thought and acted this way, it would become part of the work culture.

I like the way this article talks about resources. We have generated a lot of good ideas in our critical care unit. How does the manager decide how much time and money to allocate to each idea?

I would like to thank the Burlew’s librarian, Julie Smith, for her EBN articles in “picks from the literature.” See April 13, 2007, in this blog.