Answer To: Description: This inter-professional unit provides foundational knowledge and skills for ways of...
Robert answered on Dec 22 2021
Running head: EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE IN HEALTH CARE
ACU No.
HLSC122: Evidence Based Practice in Health Care
Assessment task number: Inquiry in Health Care
Student’s full name and ACU ID
EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE IN HEALTH CARE
ACU No. 2
Introduction
During the 1980s, a new term “evidence-based medicine” evolved for describing the
approach which was based on scientific evidence in determining the best practice.
Later on, the term got changed to become “evidence-based practice” as clinicians
believed that scientific evidence is of utmost importance in the clinical decision-
making. Subsequently, the experts started talking about the evidence-based
healthcare as the process through which the research evidence is used for making
decision about a group of patients or a specific population (Borbasi, & Jackson,
2012). In evidence-based healthcare and evidence-based practice, it is assumed
that evidence can be used in the context of a specific patient’s desires and
preferences, the expertise of a clinician, and the clinical situation (Berke et al, 2011).
It is expected that the healthcare professionals can critique, synthesize, and read
research findings and they can also interpret the existing clinical practice guidelines
that are evidence-based.
Evidence-Based Practice
Evidence-based practice is nothing but the explicit, judicious, and conscientious use
of the current best evidence while making decisions for care of individual patients. It
is the process by which the clinicians make clinical decisions based on the best
research evidence available, using their expertise and caring about patients’
preferences (Sackett et al, 2008). Evidence-based practice should not be mistaken
as quality improvement, research utilization, or nursing research, however it is
related to all these processes. For instance, most of the quality improvement projects
are evidence-based, and findings can contribute to research initiatives, or EBP. Also,
evidence-based practice projects may lead to quality improvement initiative or
research study (Bero et al, 2008).
Nurses have a pivotal role to play in providing and ensuring evidence-based
practice. They must go through a brainstorming process and ask several questions
to themselves such as, “What is evidence for the intervention?”, “How can we
provide the best practice?”, and “Is there any scope of improvement?”. Nurses come
very handy in identifying clinical problems in a healthcare facility and use evidence
for improving practice (Silagy, & Haines, 2009). For instance, a currently published
evidence-based project has described that there are many benefits of discontinuing
the traditional practice of listening to bowel sounds of the patients who have
undergone an elective abdominal surgery. The authors concluded, based on the
EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE IN HEALTH CARE
ACU No. 3
evidence, that clinical parameters like first postoperative bowel movement and return
of flatus were handier than the bowel sounds to determine return of gastrointestinal
mobility post abdominal surgery (Melnyk, & Fineout, 2011). This...