Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample
In healthcare, evidence-based practice (EBP) is an approach that integrates the most current and proven research in making clinical decisions and problems solving to improve the quality of care and patient safety while reducing care costs. The approach solves clinical problems by combining the best available practices from the latest literature, clinical experience, patient values, and preferences during care delivery (Katowa-Mukwato et al., 2022). Evidence-based practice also improves care effectiveness and accountability during care delivery by incorporating patient observations, cultural perspectives, and priorities while making decisions.(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample)
Evidence-based is used to address medical and nursing problems. Although medical and nursing problems affect patient outcomes, they have distinct differences. Notably, a nursing problem relates to nursing practice issues that relate to health assessment and patient attitude, emotions, and response towards a healthcare problem. Nursing care problems involve the patients, their families/caregivers, and the community, including patient care modalities such as comfort, support, prevention, recovery, health screening, care coordination, and health education.(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample)
An excellent example of a nursing problem is healthcare-associated infections among patients reducing the quality of care and patient safety while increasing healthcare costs. In this nursing care problem, the nurse involves the patients, families/caregivers, and the community affected by the problem through nursing interventions such as hygiene, health education, and emotional/cognitive/spiritual support. On the contrary, medical problems are related to a patient’s disease state and physical symptoms. Addressing a medical issue entails disease diagnosis, identifying potential causes and prognoses, and devising appropriate treatment to promote healing. An example of a medical problem is a patient diagnosed with diabetes. The medical problem can be solved by regulating the patient’s blood sugar levels to maintain a normal body physiological state.(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample)
PICOT questions should be based on and used to address nursing problems. Establishing PICOT questions on nursing problem help nurses and other healthcare professionals to address a big scope of health problems and have an immense impact on addressing the patient’s physical and emotional/cognitive /moral states. PICOT question is one of the first strategies for implementing EBP to solve patient problems while improving care quality, patient safety, and overall health outcomes.(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample)
Reference
Katowa-Mukwato, P., Mwiinga-Kalusopa, V., Chitundu, K., Kanyanta, M., Chanda, D., Mwelwa, M. M., … & Carrier, J. (2021). Implementing Evidence-Based Practice Nursing using the PDSA model: Process, lessons, and Implications. International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences, 14, 100261.(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214139120301384
Topic 1 DQ2
Nursing practice encounters problems that affect healthcare delivery, reducing the quality of care and patient safety. One main problem that has continued to affect nursing practice is the nursing workforce shortage. Although nurses contribute to one of the largest healthcare workforces, the increased demand for their healthcare services has caused problems in staffing. The Word Health Statistics Report claims there are 29 million nurses across the globe, while 3.9 million of them are from the United States. The US Bureau of Statistics also reports that 275000 nurses will be needed from 2020 to 2030 to meet rising healthcare demands (Badr et al., 2022). Lack of potential nursing educators, high turnover, and inequitable workforce distribution are some causes of the problem.(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample)
Aging global populations have increased demand for healthcare services since older people have high morbidity rates that strain the nursing workforce. In this case, nursing training faculties lack enough resources to train new talents to replace the older generations. A shortage of resources limits enrollment in nursing education, which reduces the number of nurses that graduate from nursing schools leading to a shortage (Haddad et al., 2022). As mentioned, the nursing shortage harms healthcare quality and patient satisfaction. Nursing shortage increases the number of medical errors contributing to high morbidity and mortality rates. Nurses working in healthcare facilities with high nurse-to-patient ratios have high workloads that contribute to burnout, which leads to work-related stress and job dissatisfaction, causing high turnover rates and more staffing problems.(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample)
However, nursing research plays a vital role in addressing the nursing shortage. First, nursing research aids in identifying the main causes that lead to nursing shortages and devising potential solutions. Nursing research can also help improve nursing curricula to ensure that more nurses graduate into practice to address the problems. Through research, the nursing profession can devise suitable nursing staff recruitment and retention strategies to ensure the required workforce is available to offer the required service to improve patient outcomes. The research will also help establish the right nurse-to-patient ratios to address patient needs effectively. Thus, adequate staffing ensures that nurses offer patient-centered care as they spend more time identifying and addressing patient needs leading to improved health outcomes.(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample)
References
Badr, S., Nyce, A., Al Soueidy, A., Freeze, B., Bosire, J., Jovin, F., … & Rachoin, J. S. (2022). ED Patient Experience: Does Day of the Week or Time of the Day Matter? Journal of Patient Experience, 9, 23743735221143734. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23743735221143734
Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2022). Nursing shortage. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/(Evidence-based Practice Comprehensive Nursing Paper Sample)