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The Pros And Cons Of Evidence-Based Practice

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Evidence-based practice (EBP) in nursing has been widely adopted in many advanced countries. Although EBP has been introduced to Hong Kong for over 20 years, it is still quite indistinct for many nurses and nursing students. For me, a local nursing student, I thought EBP was merely equivalent to the direct use of research findings to guide specific nursing interventions and decision making in nursing care. However, I found that EBP is broader and deeper than what I thought recently. EBP is not only about research utilisation but also involves an integration of research evidence, scientific theories, clinical circumstances and setting, available resources, expertise clinical judgement, and patient preference (Satterfield et al., 2009). It …show more content…

Firstly, on individual level, inadequate knowledge on EBP is a common barrier for developing EBP in nursing. Even though RNs were trained to implement EBP in their pre-registration course, there are still almost 70% of nurses feel incapable to evaluate the research quality (Chien, 2010), and 47% of nurses reported that they are unable to understand the statistical terms and technical jargon used in research (Majid et al., 2011).These proved that even RNs have been trained for EBP, but the education is not enough for them to develop EBP in workplaces. Secondly, on organisation level, heavy workload preventing nurses from adopting EBP at work places. The study (Majid et al., 2011) revealed that over half of nurses agreed that the main barrier to implementing EBP was that they have inadequate time to search and read research articles at their workplaces, and 46% of the nurses agreed that they have inadequate time to change current practices. In overbusy working environment, nurses inclined to seek opinions from colleagues rather than searching research evidence as it is more convenient and …show more content…

Those specialist nurses are responsible for carry out EBP in the clinical area. Having a specialised nurses was found to be helpful for EBP development in the hospitals or organisations as they will act as facilitators in the organisations to facilitate the process of practice and policy change (Ring, Coull, Howie, Murphy‐Black, & Watterson, 2006). The specialist nurses will also act as mentors to mentor front-line nurses to adopting EBP. The research (Majid et al., 2011) found that nurses thought mentorship is helpful in adopting EBP. Morgan (2012) found that mentor-led EBP provides strong support to clinical nurses and they will encounter less

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